This text is unedited and unformatted. It is simply auto-extracted from the PDF online at https://bahai-library.com/browne_literary_history . This miniature is from a Persian Manuscript containing selected poems from the Dtwiins of Six Persian poets. The manuscript was transcribed in A.H. 714(=A.D. I~IS),formerly belonged to Shih Isma'il the Safawt, and is now in the India Office Library (No. 13z=No. 903 of EthB's Catalogue). As the artist himself lived in the Mongol Period, the details of costume may be regarded as authoritative; while the dserence of physiognomy between the Persian and the six Mongols is clearly apparent. A LITERARY HISTORY OF PERSIA VOLUMEI1 From Firdawsi to Sa'di r,<, 7%- EDWARD G. BROWWE ' AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1956 A LITERARY HISTORY OF PERSIA IN FOUR YOLUMES VOLUME I1 This miniature is from a Persian Manuscript containing selected poems from the Diwdns of Six Persian poets. The manuscript was transcribed in A.H. 714 (=A.D. 1315)~formerly belonged to Shiih Isma'fl the Safawi, and is now in the India Office Library (No. 13z=No. 903 of EthB's Catalogue). As the artist himself lived in the Mongol Period, the details of costume may be regarded as authoritative; while the difference of physiognomy between the Persian and the six Mongols is clearly apparent. A LITERARY HISTORY OF PERSIA VOLUMEI1 From Firdawsi to Su'dr' CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1956 PUBLISHED BY THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS London Office: Bentley House, N.w. I American Branch: New York Agents for Canada, India, and Pakistan: Macmillan First Edition (T. Fisher Unwin) 1906 Reprinted 1915 1920 Reprinted (Cambridge University Press) 1928 1951 First printed tn Great Britain at The University Press, Cnmbrtdge Reprinted by Spottiswoodc, Bnllantync &Y Co., Ltd., Colchcrtn ". DEDICATION ALTHOUGHthis book of mine is all unmeet, Light of mine eyes, to lay at thy dear feet, I think that Alchemy which worketh still Can turn to gold this copper, if it will, Enlarge its merits and ignore its ill. Can I forget how, as it neared its end, A happy chance permitted me to blend Rare intervals of worship ill-concealed, Occasions brief of love but half revealed, Long days of hope deferred, short hours of bliss, Into 'a happiness so full as this ? Now come I, Dearest, for my book to claim Even so great an honour as thy name ! Preface , I 11 i THEpresent volume is a continuation of that which I published in the same series four years ago, and carries the LiteraryI History of Persia on from the beginning of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century of our era. This period, comparatively short as it is, includes most of the greatest poets and writers of the Persians, and I hardly anticipate that I shall be accused by any competent critic of discussing it with undue detail. Should I succeed in carrying out my original plan, by continuing the history down to our own times, I believe that the remaining six centuries and a half can be adequately treated in one volume equal in size to this. Of the defects of this book, now that it is all in type, I am fully sensible. They arise largely from the fact that it was chiefly written during vacations, and that two months or more often elapsed between the completion of one chapter and the beginning of the next. Under present conditions the Uni- versity of Cambridge is far from being the best place in the world for quiet, steady, regular work ; and though the books of reference indispensable for a compilation of this kind were there, leisure was only to be found elsewhere, even as the poet $2ib says :- Shigtfa bd lhamar hargiz nu-gardad jam' dar yak jd: Muhdl-ast hnki bd-ham ni'mat u dinddn shavad paydd I Never in one place are found the luscious fruit and blossom fine ;* Vain it is for one to hope both teeth and dainties to combine 1" PREFACE xi marred not only by occasional repetitions, but by a certain disconnectedness and lack of uniformity for which I crave the reader's indulgence. On the other hand I have through- out endeavoured to use original sourcesand to form independent views, and in this I have been aided by several rare works, inaccessible or hardly accessible to my predecessors, of which I may specially mention the Chahcir Maqrfla ("Four Discourses ") of Ni&imi-i-'Arbdl of Samarqand, the Lubrfbu'l-Albdb of Muhammad 'Awff, the Mu'ajjam of Shams-i-Qays, and my notes on the Rcihatu's-Sudhr of ar-Rhwandl, the Jahdn-gushrf of 'Atl Malik-i-Juwayni, the Jcinzi'u't-Tawdrikh of Rashfdu'd- Dln Fadlu'llbh, and other similar books. The work itself has had my whole heart, and I would that it could also have had my undivided attention. For Islim and the Perso-Arabian civilisation of Isliln I have the deepest admiration; an admiration which it is especially incumbent on me to confess at a time when these are so much mis- understood and misrepresented by Europeans ;who appear to imagine that they then~selveshave a monopoly of civilisation, and a kind of divine mandate to impose on the whole world not only their own political institutions but their own modes of thought. Year by year, almost, the number of independent Muslim States grows less and less, while such as still remain- Persia, Turkey, Arabia, Morocco, and a few others-are ever more and more overshadowed by the menace of European interference. Of course it is in part their own fault, and Asiatic indifference and apathy combine with European "earth-hunger" and lust of conquest to hasten their dis- integration. To the unreflecting Western mind the ex- tinction of these States causes no regret, but only exhilarating thoughts of more "openings" for their children and their capital; but those few who know and love the East and its peoples, and realise how deeply we are indebted to it for most of the great spiritual ideas which give meaning and value to life, will feel, with Chesterton's "Man in Green," that with the subsidence of every such State something is lost to the world which can never be replaced. Yet this is not, perhaps, a question which can be settled by argument, any more than it can be settled by argument which is better, a garden planted with one useful vegetable or with a variety of beautiful flowers, each possessing its own distinctive colour and fragrance. But this at least must be admitted by any one who has a real sympathy with and understanding of the Spirit of the East, that it suffers atrophy and finally death under even a good and well-meaning European administration; and that for this reason Constantinople, Damascus, Shiriz and Fez, for all their shortcomings, do possess something of artistic and in- tellectual, even, perhaps, of moral value, which Cairo, Delhi, Algiers, and Tunis are losing or have lost. Whether Isllm is still bleeding to death from the wounds first inflicted on it by the Mongols six hundred and fifty years ago, or whether the proof given by Japan that the Asiatic is not, even on the physical plane, necessarily inferior to the European may lead to some unexpected revival, is a question of supreme interest which cannot here be discussed. My deepest gratitude is due to my sister, Miss E. M. Browne, and to my friend and colleague, Mr. E. H. Minns, for reading through the proofs of this book, and for making not only minor verbal corrections, but suggestions of a more general character. To Mr. Minns I am also indebted for interpreting to me the monographs of several eminent Russian Orientalists to which I have referred in these pages, and which, but for his generous help, would have been to me sealed books. Of the general criticisms which he was kind enough to make, one, I think, merits a reference in this place. He tells me that in the first chapter, when treating of Persian Prosody, I have not been sufficiently explicit for the reader who is not an Orientalist as to the nature of the bayt and the fundamental laws of quantity in scansion. xIi PREFA CE As regards the first of these points, the bayt or verse is, as I have said, always regarded by the Muslims as the unit, and for this reason I consider that it should not, as is often done in European books, be called a "couplet." That it is the unit is clearly shown by the fact that a metre is called musaddas (hexameter) or rnutharnman (octameter) when the bayt comprises six or eight feet respectively. Unfortunately the bayt, which is always written or printed in one line in the East, is generally, when transcribed in Roman characters, too long to be thus treated, and has to be printed in two lines, as occurs, for instance, in the bayt printed in the Roman character about the middle of page IS, and again in the bayt occupying lines 5 and 6 on the following page. This fashion of printing, and, in the first case, the fact that the bayt, being the initial verse of a gliazal or ode, has an internal rhyme, is liable to delude the reader into supposing that he has to do with what we understand by a couplet, and not with the unit connoted by the word bayt. As regards the second point, the rules of scansion in Persian are exceedingly simple, and no gradus is needed to determine the quantity ot the vowels. All long vowels (equally un- mistakeable in the written and the spoken word) are, of course, long, and are distinguished in this book by accents. Short vowels are short, unless followed by two consonants, whether both consonants come in the same word, or one at the end of one word and the other at the beginning of the next. All this is easy enough of comprehension to the classical scholar, but what follows is peculiar to Persian. Every word ending in two consonants, or in one consonant (except n, which, being reckoned as a nasal, does not count) preceded by a long vowel, is scanned as though it ended with an additional short vowel.' This hypothetical vowel (called in the East nim-fatba, the "half-firtl?a," and, most inappro- 'This additional short vowel (the nim-fat!ta)is, however, not reckoned at the end of a verse (ha~lt)or half-ve~se (rizigrd'). PREFA CE xiii priately, by some French writers "l'izafit metriquc") is actually pronounced by the Indians, but not by the Persians, but it must always be reckoned unless the succeeding word begins with a vowel. The same rule also applies to syllables. A few examples will best serve to illustrate the above remarks. Words like bdd (wind), bid (willow), bird (was), k6r (work), shir (lion), mhr (ant) scan as though they were b6da, bida, &c., i.c., I --I , not I -I . The same applies to words like dust (hand), band (bond), gard (dust), which scan as though they were dusta, banda and gar&. Similarly, words like bdd-glr (" wind-catcher," a kind of ventilation-shaft), shir-mard (brave man, lit. "lion-man "), dirr-bin (telescope), dart-kash (glove) scan as though they were bdda-g/ra, shir%narda (-----), dhra-bin, dusta-kash (---1. But jah6n (world), nigin (signet), darirn (inside) scan I --I ,because they end in n. So in the verse on page 16, which is written in the apocopated hexameter ramal:- the scansion is as follows :- AjXrfnf I&dhZ sPdd-1 yud h8mf 11 par by-ganjan-I dnr aYy~~t#-I yud hami 11 There are a few other peculiarities or scansion in Persian verse, as, for example, that monosyllables ending in -u, like tzi (thou), dh (two), chh (like), &c., may be scanned either short or long, as is the case with the i which marks the $(ifat, while the monosyllable connoting the word for ccand"may be treated either as a long vowel (rf), or a short vowel (ii), or as a consonant followed by a short vowel (wh') ;but, save in a few exceptional cases, the reader who has familiarised himself with the peculiarities above mentioned will have no difficulty in scanning any Persian verse which he may come across. xiv PREFA CE The publication of this volume, originally fixed for May 1st of the present year, was inevitably delayed by circumstances into which I need not here enter. This delay I regret, and I daire to offer my apologies for it to my friend Mr. Fisher Unwin, and also my thanks for his readiness to accept an excuse which he was kind enough to regard as valid and sufficient. My thanks arc also due to the printers, Mesrs. UnwinBrothen, Ltd., of Woking and London, for the singular care with which they have printed a book presenting many--- typographical difficulties. EDWARD G. BROWNE. MAY 16, 1906. Contents CHAPTER PAGBI. RETROSPECTIVEAND INTRODUCTORY.. . I 11. THEGHAZNAW~PERIOD,UNTIL TIlE DEATHOF SULTAN MAHM~D . .90 IV. THE LITERATUREOF THE EARLYSELJBQPERIOD: THE NID_H~MU'L-MULKAND HIS CONTEMPORARIES212 V. ,THE PERIODOF SANIARAND HIS BROTHERS. 297 VI. THE FOURGREATPOETSOF THE LATE TWELFTH CENTURY,AN WAR^, KHA~AN~,NID_HAM~OF GANIA, AND DHAH~R OF F~RYAB . 364 VII. THE EMPIREOF KHW~~RAZXIAND THE MONGOLIN- VASION, UNTIL THE FALLOF BAGHD~DAND THE EXTINCTIONOF THE CALIPHATE. L . 426 VIII. WRITERSOF THE EARLIERMONGOLPERIOD. 467 IX FAR~DU'D-D~N'ATTAR, JALI(LU'D-D~NRhi, AND SA'D~, AND SOME LESSERPOETSOF THIS PERIOD . 506 CHAPTER I RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTORY INa former volume,I intended to serve as an Introduction to this work, and yet to be in a measure independent, I have treated of the History of the Persians, chiefly from the intellectual and literary standpoints, from its first beginnings down to the early Ghaznawi Period, in which, about A.D. 1000, the genius of Firdawsi definitely assured the success of that Renaissance of Persian literature which began rather more than a century before his time. The present volume, therefore, deals not with origins, but aith Persian literary history in the narrower sense-that is, the literature of the Persians (including so much of the external and intellectual history of Persia as is necessary for a proper comprehension of this) from the time when their language assumed its present form (that is, from the time of the Arab Conquest and the adoption by the Persians of the religion of IslPm in the seventh century of our era) down to the present day. This post-Muhammadan literature (which is what we ordinarily mean when we speak of "Persian Litera- ture ") arose gradually after the subjugation of Persia by the Arabs, and the overthrow by Is15m of the Zoroastrian creed, A Literary History of Persia from the Earliest Times until Firdawsi (London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1902 ; pp. xiv and 521). For the sake of brevity I shall henceforth refer to this volume simply as the Prolegomcrra; a title which best indicates its scope, aim. and character. 2 2 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTUX Y and may be said to have begun, so far as documentary evidence exists, about a thousand years ago. During the whole of this period the language has undergone changes so slight that the verses of ancient poets like Handhala of BSdghis (A.D. 820- 872) and Rhdagi (end of ninth and beginning of tenth centuries) are at least as easily understood by a Persian of the present day as are the works of Shakespear by a modern Englishman. It is important for all students of Persian to- apprehend this fact thoroughly, and to realise that that lan- guage has changed less in the last thousand years than English has changed in the last three centuries. The most archaic literary monuments of the Persian language (by which term, tllroughout this volume, post-Muhammadall Persian is intended) are, indeed, characterised by certain peculiarities of style and vocabulary ; but I much question whether there exists any Persian scholar, native or foreign, who could assign even an approximate date to a work of unknown authorship written within the last five centuries and containing no historical allusions which might serve to fix the period of its com- position. I cannot in this volume repeat what I have elsewhere set forth in detail as to the history of Persia in pre-Muhammadan and early Muhammadan times. This history was Scope ofthe in my Pro/egomcna carried down to that periodProle~oomma contained inthe when the great 'Abbisid Caliphate of Baghdld, prevlous volume. culminating in the splendid reigns of Hirlinu'r- Rashid and his son al-Ma'mlin (A.D. 786-833), was already on the decline ;a decline manifested externally by the gradual detachment from effective central control of one province after another, and continuing steadily, if slowly, until HlilLgG's Mongol hordes gave it the coup dc grace in A.D. 1258, when Baghdid was sacked and the last real Caliph of the House of 'Abbis cruelly done to death. For the ordinary student of Persian literature it is sufficient to know, so far as its origins are concerned, that the immediate LANGUAGES OF ANCIENT PERSIA 3 ancestor of Persian was Pahlawi, the official language of Persia under the Slshnian kings (A.D. 226-651), and, for two or three subsequent centuries, the religious Sketch of the origins discussed language of the Zoroastrian priests ;that the extant in the Prokgo- mot,. literature of Pahlawi has been estimated by Dr. E. W. West (perhaps the greatest European authority on this subject) as roughly equal in bulk to the Old Testament, and that it is chiefly religious and liturgical in character ; that there exist, besides this literature, inscriptions on rocks, coins, and gems dating from the middle of the third century ; that this Pahlawi language, the ancestor of later Persian, is itself the descendant of the Old Persian tongue known to us only through the inscriptions carved on the rocks of Persepolis, Behistun, and other places by order of Darius the Great and subsequent Achzemenian kings ;and that the Avestic (so-called "Zend ") language in which the Zoroastrian scriptures are written was a sister-tongue to that last men- tioned and to Sanskrit, standing, therefore, out of the direct line of ascent from modern Persian, and represented at the present day by certain provincial dialects of Persia, and, as Darmesteter supposes, by the Pashto or Afghin speech. Arranged in tabular form, the above facts may be expressed as follows :- I. Old Penian of Achaenlenian Avestic, represented by the Avesta, Period of which the oldest portion is (B.c. 550-330)) that known as the GLitlzds, which represented ollly by inscriptions. are generally supposed to date froin the time of Zoroasteror his immediate disciples (probably about B.C. 600). 11. The Zlzvasion of Alexander (B.c. 333) inaugurates a period of anarchy, devoid of literary monuments, which lasted five centuries and a half, and was terminated by the establishment of- 111. The Sdsdrriar~Dyrzasiy (A.D. 226651)~undef which Pahlawi became the official language of the State and of the Zoroastrian Church, this language being the child of Old Persian, and the parent of modern Persian. 4 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTORY IV. The Arab Coitqt~esl(A.D.641-651)~resulting in the conversion of the great bulk of the Persian nation to the religion of Islim, and in the practical supersession of Persian by Arabic as the official and literary language. V. The Persiaiz Renaissartce, with which the period included in this volume may be said to begin, and which, beginning about A.D. 850, gathers strength in proportion as Persia succeeds in emancipating herself more and more from the control of the weakening Caliphate of Baghdid, and in re-asserting her political independence. Such, in outline, is Persian literary history ; but while the ordinary student of Persian may well content himself wit11 a summary and superficial knowledge of all that pre- Influence of the ArabConquest cedes the Arab Conquest, he cannot thus lightly on Persia. pass over the consequences of that momentous event. Once again in this volume, as in that which preceded it (p. 6), I am fain to quote Noldeke's most pregnant saying, aHelleni,sm never touched more than the surface of Persian life, but Irin was penetrated to the core by Arabian religion and Arabian ways." The Arabic language is in a special degree the language of a great religion. To us the Bible is the Bible, whether we read it in the original tongues or in our own ; The unique position the but it is otherwise with the Qur'in amongst Arabic language. the Muslims. To them this Arabic Qur'in is the very Word of God, an objective, not a subjective reve- lation. When we read therein : "Qul :Huwa 'lldhu Ahad" ('& Say : He, God, is One "), God Himself is the speaker, not the Prophet; and therefore the Muslim, in quoting his scripture, employs the formula, "HE says, exalted is HE"; while only in quoting the traditions (Ahddith) of the Prophet does he say, "He says, upon him be the Blessing of God and His Peace." Hence the Qur'Bn cannot properly be translated into another tongue, for he who translates by so doing interprets and perchance distorts. It is only by Christian rnissiol~aries,so far as my knowledge goes, that translations of UNIQUE POSITION OF ARABiC 5 the Qur'in have been published detached from the text ; amongst Muslims the most that we find is an interlinear rendering of the Arabic text in Persian, Turkish, or Urdii, as the case may be, such rendering being in general slavishly literal.= In addition to this, the prayers which every good Muslim should recite five times a day are in Arabic, as are the Confession of Faith and other religious formulae which are constantly on the tongue of the true believer, be he Persian, Turk, Indian, Afghan, or Malay ; so that every Muslim must have some slight acquaintance with the Arabic language, while nothing so greatly raises him in the eyes of his fellows as a more profound knowledge of the sacred tongue of Islam. In addition to all this, the language of every people who embraced Islim was inundated from the first by Arabic words, first the technical terms of Theology and Jurisprudence, then the terminology of all the nascent sciences known to the Muhammadan civilisation, and lastly a mass of ordinary words, which latter have often, as the former have almost always, entirely displaced the native equivalent. To write Persian devoid of any admixture of Arabic is at least as difficult as to write English devoid of any admixture of Greek, Latin, or French derivatives ;it can be done within certain limits, but the result is generally incomprehensible without the aid of a dictionary. As I write, there lies before me a specimen of such attempts, to wit a communication of nearly one hundred lines made to the Akhtar or "Star" (an excellent Persian newspaper formerly published at Constantinople, but now unfortunately extinct) by certain Zoroastrians or "guebres " of Ydzd, and published in the issue cf October 27, 1890. The matter is simple, and the abstract ideas requiring expression few ;yet the writers have felt themselves compelled to give This statement needs some qualification,for my colleague and friend, Hyji Mirzi 'Abdu'l-Husayn Khin of Khshin, brought back with him to England from the Ijijiz a very fine manuscript containing a Persian translation of the Qur'in, made by order of Nidir Shih and unaccom- panied by the Arabic original. 6 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTORY footnotes explaining (in every case save two by an Arabic equivalent) the meanings of no less, than fourteen words, and marly other such glosses would be required to make the article intelligible to the ordinary Persian reader. Thus ciwizha (pure) must be glossed as khcili, a'at-ad (form) as stit-at, khuhr (country) as watan, farhikht (courtesy, culture) as adab, and so on, the glosses in all these cases and most others being Arabic words. Allother more ambitious, but scarcely more successful, attempt of the same kind is Prince Jalbl's Na'ma-2- Kl~usrawcin(" Book of Princes"), a short history of the pre- Muhammadan dynasties of Persia published at Vienna in A.H. 1297 (A.D. 1880),and reviewed by Mordtrnatln in vol. xxviii of the Zeitschrift deu Deutschen Morgenliindischen Gesellschaft, pp. 506-508. Even the Sha'hnrima of Firdawsi, composed nine centuries ago, and, as I think is shown by a study of con- temporary poetry, purposely composed in the most archaic style and speech which the author could command, is far from being so free from Arabic words as is often asserted and imagined. Thus far we have confined ourselves to the consideration of the influence exerted by the Arabs on the Persians in the Arabian Science. domain of language only, but this influence is not less perceptible in other fields. Strongest in Theology and Jurisprudence, it extends also to Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetry, and all the sciences known to the Muslims. These sciences were, of course, in many cases of complex origin, being borrowed by the Arabs (chiefly during the early 'Abbisid period, i.e., the latter part of the eighth century of our era) from other more civilised nations, notably the Persians and the Greeks ;and indeed they are divided in such works as the iMafritl(lu'l-cUlhm ("Keys of the Sciences ") 1 into two groups, the native or indige~lous (Jurisprudence, Scholastic Theology, Grammar, Writing, Poetry and Prosody, Ed. Van Vloten, pp. 5-7. For an account of the contents, see my Prolegomena, pp. 382-383. CAPACITY OF ARABIC I 7 and History), and the exotic (Philosophy, Logic, Medicine, Arithmetic, Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrology, Music, : Mechanics, and Alchemy). All these, however, were 1 thoroughly assimilated into the complex Arabo-Persian culture of the 'Abbbsid capital, Baghdbd, and in their entirety con- stitute what is often, but inexactly, styled "Arabian Science " -a science which, drawn from many different sources, forms a synthesis common to all Muhammadan peoples, and which I has exercised and continues to exercise an influence second i only to that of the religion of IslIm itself in bringing about that solidarity of sentiment so conspicuous in the Muslim world.1 For a scientific language, indeed, Arabic is eminently fitted1 by its wealth of roots and by the number of derivative forms, each expressing some particular modification of F~tnessofArabic for sc~ent~fic the root-idea, of which each is susceptible. Let us purposes. illustrate this by two examples, the first drawn from the terminology of Medicine, the second formed after a perfectly sound analogy to express a quite modern idea. The primitive verb has in Arabic some dozen derived forms (com- monly called "conjugations "), each expressing some definite modification (causative, intensive, reciprocal, middle, &c.) of the meaning connoted by the original verb. Of these ten conjugations, the tenth is commonly desiderative, and, if weE substitute the numbers I, 2, 3, for the first, second, and third I letters of the triliteral root the general form of its verbal $ noun will be (Isti. I. 2. a'. 3), and of its active participle (Musta. I. 2. i. 3). Thus from the simple verbghafara, "he pardoned," we have in the tenth conjugation istighfdr, "asking for pardon," and mustagl$r, "one who asks for pardon ";from kamala, ahe was perfect," istikmdl, "seeking perfection," and mustarhmil, one who seeks perfection ";and so on. Now the old theory (adopted b) the Arabian physicians) as to the aetiology of dropsy was that it was caused by excessive drinking (" crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops "), and hence it was named by the Arabs (and consequently by all the Muhammadan peoples) 8 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTKODUCTORY irtisqrf, "craving for drink," while the sufferer is called mus- tasqf, both forms belonging to the tenth conjugation of the root saqrf, "he gave drink to." So in quite modern times a need has arisen for an equivalent in Arabic to the European term "Orientalist," and this has been met by taking the regularly-formed participle of the tenth, or desiderative, con- jugation of the root from which comes the word sharq, "the East," and coining the derivative murtashriq, which can only mean "one who desires " or "is interested in the East." These instances will suffice to show the facility wherewith new ideas can be denoted in Arabic by forms which, hitherto unused, precisely and unmistakeably indicate the idea to be expressed. The Arabs themselves (including, of course, peoples like the Egyptians who have adopted the Arabic speech) are intensely, and justly, proud of their glorious language, and Pride of the Arabs in tlleir exclaim with the fullest conviction, "A/-[iamdulanguage. li 'I/dhi 'lladhl khalaqa' I-Lisrfna'l-'Arabiyya ahsana min kulli lijdn" ("Praise be to God who created the Arabic language the finest of all languages"). Whether or not we are to go as far as this, it is at least certain that no satisfactory knowledge of the languages, literatures, and modes of thought of Persia, Turkey, Muhammadan India, or any other Muslim land is possible without a considerable knowledge of Arabic, and that in particular our appreciation and enjoyment of these literatures grows in direct ratio to this knowledge. In my previous volume on the Literary History of Persia until the Erne of Iiirdawsl I discussed at some length what I have called the Prolegomena to the history of Recapitulationofpro~c,,omcna.Persian literature in the narrower sense. I spoke there of the three ancient languages of Persia (the Old Persian, the Avestic, and the Pahlawl), and of some of the dialects by which they are now represented. I sketched in outline the earlier religious systems which prevailed in that country (to wit, Zoroastrianism and the heresies of Manes and SCOPE OF PRECED(NG VOLUME' 9 Mazdak), and the history of the last great national dynasty, the Sisinian. Passing, then, to the Arabs, whose conquest of Persia in the seventh century of our era wrought, as we have seen, such deep and lasting changes alike in the religion, the language, the literature, the life, and the thought of the Persians, I spoke briefly of their state in the "Days of Ignorance " (Ayyrimu'l-Jdhiliyyat) or heathendom, ere the Prophet Muhammad arose, and of their ancient poems, which, dating at least from the end of the fifth century of our era, still remain the classical models which every versifier of Arat speech aspires to imitate when writing in the heroic vein. I then described in a summary manner the advent of the Prophet, the doctrine of al-Islim, the triumph of the Muhammadan arms, the rule of the Four Orthodox Caliphs, and the origin of the great Shf'ite and Khirijite schisms. I endeavoured to depict the semi-pagan Imperialism of the Umayyad Caliphs, and the growing discontent of the subject-races (especially the Persians), culminating in the middle of the eighth century in the great ,revolt of the KhurisAnfs under Abli Muslim, the Battle of the Zib, the overthrow and destruction of the Umayyad power in the East, and the establishment of the 'Abbhid Caliphate, which, enduring for some five cen- turies, was finally destroyed (save for the shadowy existence which it maintained in Egypt until the Ottoman Turkish Sultin Selim the First, in A.D. 1517, took from the last scion of this House the titles and insignia which it had hitherto preserved) by the great catastrophe of the Mongol Invasion in the middle of the thirteenth century. The period included in this volume begins at a time when the glories of "the golden prime of good Haroun Alraschid " had long passed away. The early 'Abbisid The perioddircusscdin this Caliphs, though they never obtained possessionvolume. of Spain, otherwise maintained and extended the vast empire won by the first successors of the Prophet-an empire extending from Morocco to Sind and from Aden to 10 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTORY Khwirazm (Khiva), and including, besides North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Persia, Afghbn- istbn, Baliichistin, a large portion of Turkisthn, a smaller portion of India, and the islands of Crete and Cyprus. The first step towards the weakening and dissolution of this empire may be said to have been taken when al-Ma'miin, the son of HArhnu'r-Rashid, rewarded his general Tihir Dhu'l-Yaminayn ("the Ambidexter "), in A.D. 820, with the permanent govern- ment of Khurb6n for himself and his heirs, who held this province from father to son till they were displaced by the "Brazier " or SaffAri dynasty in A.D. 872. These TAhirids Ire generally accounted the first post-Muharnmada~lPersian dynasty; and, though they never claimed to be in any way independent of the Caliphs of Baghdid, the hereditary character of their power clearly differentiates them from the governors and proconsuls of previous times, who were transferred from province to province by the central Government as it saw fit. The transition from the state of an hereditary governor or satrap to that of a practically independent Amir (for the title of Sultan was first assumed by Mahmiid of Ghazna at the period with which this volume opens) was very gradual, and was not always continuous. The SaffAri dynasty was, for instance, less obedient and more independent in its earlier days than the Samdnid dynasty which succeeded it ;but nominally even the mighty rulers of the Houses of Ghazna and Seljiiq accounted themselves the vassals of the Caliph, regarded him as their over-lord and suzerain, and eagerly sought after those titles arid honours of which he was the only recognised and legitimate source. Individual instances of overt disobedience and rebellion did, of course, occur-as, for instance, the march of Yacqiib b. Layth, the SaRiri, on Baghdhd, and his battle with the troops of the Caliph al-Mu'tamid in A.H. 262 (A.D. 875-76) 1 ; the attempt of the Seljiiq Malikshbh to A very full, but somewhat fanciful, account of this is given by the Nihhimu'l-Mulk in his Siydsat-trdnra (ed. Schefer), pp. 11-14. THE 'ABBASIDSAND THEIR RIVALS I I compel the Caliph al-Muqtadi to transfer his capital from Baghdid to Damascus or the Hijiz~about A.D. 1080 ;and the still more serious quarrel between Sanjar and al-Mustarshid in A.D. 1133, which ended in the Caliph being taken prisoner and, during his captivity, assassinated (in A.D. 1135) by the Isma'ilis, who, as al-Bundiri asserts,a were instigated to this deed by Sanjar himself. The nominal suzerainty of the Caliph of Baghdad was, however, more or less recognised by all orthodox Muhammadan princes and amirs save those of Spain, from the foundation of the 'Abbbid Caliphate, about A.D. 750, till its extinction in A.D. 1258, and during this period of five centuries Baghdad continued to be the metropolis and intellec- tual centre of Muslim civilisation, and Arabic the language of diplomacy, philosophy, and science, and, to a large extent, of belles Iettrcs and polite conversation. The great religious and political rivals of the 'Abbhsids were the heterodox Fifimid anti-Caliphs of Egypt. These repre- sented one of the two great divisions of the Shf'a, The Shi'ite rivals~fthe or "Faction," of 'All-to wit, the "Sect of the 'Abbasids. Seven," or Isma'ilfs, whose origin and history were fully discussed in the Prolegomena to this volume, together with those of the allied party of the Carmathians. The other great division of the Shf'a, the "Sect of the Twelve," which is now the State-religion of Persia, only became so generally (though it prevailed for some time in Tabaristin, and was professed by the powerful House of Buwayh) on the rise of the Safawi dynasty under Shih Isma'il in A.H. 1502, though it always had a strong hold amongst the Persians. Until the Mongol Invasion in the thirteenth century the political power of the Isma'ilis (represented in Persia by the so-called Assassins or Isma'ilis of Alamiit) was, however, as we shall presently see, much greater. I See al-Bundiri's Histmy of the Seljriqs (vol. ii of Houtsma's Recueil), P.70. Ibid., p. 178. 12 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTOR Y The great dividing line in the Muhammadan period of Asiatic history is the Mongol Invasion, which inflicted on the Muslim civilisation a blow from which it has never re- I~","5i~~~f~~ccovered, and, by destroying the Caliphate and its . metropolis of Baghdad, definitely put an end to the unity of the Muslim empire. This Mongol Invasion, beginning early in the thirteenth century with the conquests of Chingiz Kllhri, culminated in the sack of Baghddd and murder of al-Mustal$rn, the last 'Abbisid Caliph, by HGl5gii Kh%nin A.D. 1258. The devastation wrought by it throughout Persia was terrific. The irresistible Mongol hordes were bloodthirsty heatl~etiswho respected nothing, but slew, burnt, and destroyed without mercy or cotnpunction. "They came, they uprooted, they burned, they slew, they carried off, they departed" ("Amadand, u kandand, u sitkhtand, u Rushtand, u burdand, u raftand") 1-such was the account of their methods and procedure given by one of the few who escaped from the sack of Bukhiri, wherein 30,000 were slain ;and there were other cities which fared even worse than Bukhiri. The invasion of Timiir the Tartar, horrible as it was, was not so terrible in its effects as this, for Timiir was p~afessedlya Muslim, and had some consideration for mosques, libraries, and men of learning ; but Chingiz and HhlPgu were blood- thirsty heathens, who, especially when resistance was en- countered, and most of all when some Mongol prince was slain in battle, spared neither old nor young, gentle nor simple, learned nor unlearned; who stabled their horses in the mosques, burned the libraries, used priceless manuscripts for fuel, and often razed the conquered city to the ground, destroyed every living thing within it, and sowed the site with salt. Hence, as it seems to me, there is a gulf between what preceded and what followed this terrific catastrophe, which THE PERSIAN RENAISSANCE 13 effected in Muslim civilisation, science, and letters a deteriora- tion never afterwards wholly repaired. So, though ~~,g~~l&less than two centuries and a half of the period 1~~~~ which remains to be considered precede the Mongol Invasion, while six centu~iesand a half succeed it, the former may well claim for their treatment an equal space with the latter. The earliest dawn of the Persian Renaissance, which culminated in Firdawsf and his contemporaries, was fully discussed in the ProIegomena to this volume, but ~,","~~~~.a brief recapitulation in this place may not be amiss. According to 'Awfi, the oldest biographer of the Persian poets whose work has been preserved to us, and who wrote early in the thirteenth century, the first Persian qaslda was composed by a certain 'AbbPs to celebrate the entry of the 'Abbisid Caliph al-Ma'miin, the son of Hgriinu'r-Rashid, into Merv, in A.H. 193 (A.D. 808-9). This extract from 'Awfi's work (the Lubdbu'l-Albdb), including four couplets of the poem in question, was published, with translation, by Dr. H. Ethi in his interesting paper entitled Rddagi's Vorlaufcr und Zeitgenossen (pp. 36-38), but I entirely agree with A. de Biberstein Kazimirski's~view as to the spurious character of this poem. One of the oldest Persian verses which has come down to us is probably that which, as we learn from the "Four Discourses"(Chahrir Maqrila) of NidJ6mi-i-'Ariidi-i-Samarqandi (composed about the middle of the twelfth century),~inspired Ahmad al-Khujistini to rebel against the Saffiri dynasty in Divan de Mertoufclrclrri,pp. 8-9. Pizzi, I think, takes the same view. See an interesting paper on a Judmo-Persian Documcntfrom Khotan by Professor IIa~~goliouthin the J.R.A.S. for October, 1903, p. 747. = Lithographed at Tihrin in A.H. 1305, and translated by me in the Y.R.A.S. for July and October, 1899. There are two MSS. in the British Museum, and one (of which I have a copy) in Constantinople. The story to which reference is here made occurs on p. 43 of the tirage-2z+art of my translation. A critical edition of this important work, prepared by Mirzi Muhammad of Qazwin,is now being printed by the Trustees of the Gibb Memorial. 14 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTORY A.H. 262 (A.D. 875-76), and "stirred within him an impulse which would not suffer him to remain in the condition wherein he was." The verse is as follows :- Mihtad gar bi-kdm-i-slzir dar-asl Shaw, khatar kun, zi kdm-i-shir bi-jib, Yd buzurgi u rtdz u ni'mat u jdh, Yd, chd marddra't nzarg-i-rtiy-d-niy. If lordship lies within the lion's jaws, Go, risk it, and from those dread portals seize Such straight-confronting death as men desire, Or riches, greatness, rank, and lasting ease." These verses are quoted by the author of the "Four Dis- courses " in support of his proposition that "poetry is that art whereby the poet arranges imaginary propositions, and adapts the deductions, with the result that he can make a little thing appear great and a great thing small, or cause good to appear in the garb of evil and evil in the garb of good. By acting on the imagination, he excites the faculties of anger and concupiscence in such a way that by his suggestion men's temperaments become affected with exaltation or depression ; whereby he conduces to the accomplishment of great things in the order of the world." Persian poetry, then, began to be composed more than a thousand years ago,' under the earliest independent or semi- independent rulers who sprung up pari passu with Wonderful the decline, decentralisation, and disintegration ofstability of the Persian the Caliphate of Baghdid. The Persian languagelanguage. has changed so little during this long period that, save for a few archaic words and spellings, the oldest verses extant hardly present any difficulty, or even uncouthness or unfamiliarity, to the Persian of to-day. In feeling and I In my previous volume, or Prolegotnenn, I have discussed the question whether or not poetry existed in Sisinian times ;but, even if it existed, no traces of it have been preserved, and the earliest extant poetry in Persian dates from the Muhammadan period. CANONS OF CRITICISM 15 sentiment, however, a certain difference is, as it seems to me, perceptible ;the older poetry of the Saffiri and SAmAni -- periods is simpler, more natural, more objective, and less ornate and rhetorical. Nothing can be more instructive, as an indication of the change of taste which three Change of taste endcanonsof and a half centuries effected in Persia, than to criticism. compare two criticisms of the same celebrated verses of the poet Riidagi (by common 'consent the greatest Persian poet before the epoch of the Kings of Ghazna), the one contained in the Four Discourses of NiaAmi-i-'Ariidi (about A.D. I 150)) the other in Dawlatshih's Memoirs of the Poets (A.D. 1487). The poem in question begins :- BL-yi 36 yi-Mdliydn dyad hami, Bd-yi ydr-i-mihrabdn dyad hami, and its translation is as follows :- "The Jfi-yi-Mhliysn we call to mind, We long for those dear friends long left behind. The sands of Oxus, toilsome though they be, ~eneathmy feet were soft as silk to me. Glad at the friend's return, the Oxus deep Up to our girths in laughing waves shall leap. Long live BukhPrh I Be thou of good cheer I Joyous towards thee hasteth our Amir l The Moon's the Prince, BukhCB is the sky; 0 sky, the Moon shall light thee by and by I BukhPrh is the mead, the Cypress he ; Receive at last, 0 Mead, the Cypress-tree 1" 1' The extraordinary effect produced on the Amir Nasr ibn Ahmad the ~~manidby these verses, and the rich reward which Riidagi earned for them, seemed natural enough to the earlier critic, who considers that "that illustrious man (Rbdagi) was worthy of this splendid equipment, for no one has yet produced a successful imitation of that elegy, nor For the text of these verses and the whole story connected with them, see the separate reprint of my translation of the Chahdr Maqdla pp. 51-56. The Jh-yi-~Gliyinis a stream near Bukhhi. 16 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTOR Y found means to surmount triumphantly the difficulties [which the subject presents]." In particular he maintains that in the following verse (not generally included in the current text of the poem, but evidently belonging to it) :- ~fadrru madh stid dyad hanzi, Gar bi-ganj andar ziydn dyad hami. "Surely are renown and praise a lasting gain, Even though the royal coffers loss sustain1'- "are seven admirable touches of art: first, the verse is apposite ; secondly, antithetical ; thirdly, it has a refrain ; fourthly, it embodies an enunciation of equivalence ;fifthly, it has sweetness; sixthly, style ; seventhly, energy." "Every master of the craft," he concludes, ''who has deeply ,con- sidered the poetic art, will admit, after a little reflection, that I am right" ;and, so far as a foreigner may be permitted to express a judgement in the matter, 1am inclined to agree with him. That the verse is apposite cannot be denied : the poet wanted a present from the Amir, and his hint is delicate yet unmistakeable. The antithesis between the loss in money and the gain in glory and fame is well brought out. The refrain, needed only at the end of the verse, is here naturally and effectively anticipated at the end of the first hemistich. The equivalent which the Amir receives for his money is clearly indicated ; and the last three "touches," two of which at least can onlv be judged in the original, are undeniably present. Now hear now Dawlatshhh, writing about A.D. 1487, Degenerate judges these same verses, so highly esteemed by taste of Dawlatshih. Niahmi-i-'Arhdi :- "This poem [of Rlidagi's] is too long to be cited in its entirety in this place. It is said that it so deligl~tedthe King's heart that he mounted his horse and set out for Bukhiri without even stopping to put on his boots. To men of sense this appears astonishing,'for fhe verses are extremely sinzple,entirely devoid of rlzeiorical artifices and STYLE INPERSIAN 17 c~nbellishnzenfs,and lackirzg in streragth; and if in tlaese days any one were to produce such a poem in the presence of kings or nobles, it would meet with the reprobatiott of all.' It is, however, probable that as Master R6dagi possessed the completest knowledge of music [attainable] in that country, he may have composed some tune or air, and produced this poem of his in the form of a ballad with musical accompaniment, and that it was in this way that it obtained so favourable a reception. In short, we must not lightly esteem Master Rhdagi merely on account of this poem, for assuredly he was expert in all manner of arts and accomplishments, and has produced good poetry of several kinds, both mathnawfs and qa:idas, for he was a man of great distinction, and admired by high and low." Many persons are accustomed to think of Persian literature as essentially florid and ornate, abounding in rhetorica! embellishments, and overlaid with metaphor, but Persianessentiallystyle not this is only true of the literature prodllced at florid. certain periods and in certain circles, especially under the patronage of foreign conquerors of Mongolian or Turkish race. The History ofthe Mongol Conquest, by WassPf,~ written about A.D. 1328, is one notable example of this florid style of composition ;while the Rawdatu7!-;a$, the Anwrir-i- Suhayll, and other contemporary works produced under the patronage of the Timiirid princes (by whom it was transmitted to India on the foundation by Bibar of the so-called NMoghul" dynasty) about the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries afford others of a later date. It is, however, amongst the Turks of the Ottoman Empire that this detestable style finds its highest development in writers like Veysi and Nergisi, of whom a modern Turkish critic says that, though a Persian might recognise the fact that they were not writing Persian, a Turk could hardly divine that they were by way of writing Turkish. In my previous volume on the literary history of Persia, published in 1902, I gave (pp. 452-471)specimens of the verses This was his title : l' the Panegyrist" [of the Court]. His name was lAbdu'llih b. Fadlu'llih of Shiriz. 3 18 RETROSPECTIVE AND ZNTROUUCI'ORY of some seventeen Persian poets of the oldest or pre-Ghaznawi period, an amount sufficient, in ,my opinion, to entitle us to characterise in general terms this earliest verse. Characterlstlcs of early Persian Unfortunately, with the exception of the thousand poetry, as regards form couplets of Daqiqi incorporated by Firdawsi in and style. his Shdhndma,~no mathnawl or other Iong poem of the Sbmbnid or pre-Sbmbnid period has come down to us, though we know that such long narrative poems existed, c.g., Riidagi's version of the well-known tale of Kalila and Dirnna, of which sixteen couplets are preserved in Asadi's Luxhat-i-Furs, or- Persian Lexicon, compiled about A.D. 1060, and rendered accessible to students in Dr. Paul Horn's excellent edition. What is preserved to us consists chiefly of short fragments (muqat!acdt), quatrains (rubriciyydt), and a few odes (gl1azals), besides which we know that narrative math~zawipoems also existed, as well as qasldas (" purpose-poems," generally pane- gyrics). These last, however, reached their full development about the time of Firdawsi (A.E. ~ooo),with which our history begins. Of these forms, the qaslda (and the qit'a, or "frag- ment" of the qasida) was borrowed by the Persians from the Arabs, whose ancient pre-Islbmic poems (e.g., the celebrated Mu'allaqdt) are the classical models for this style of composi- tion, which, however, together with the love-poem or ghazal, underwent certain modifications in the hands of the Persians. The quatrain, on the other hand, as well as the mathnawl (or "couplet" poem, where the rhyme is between the two hemi- stichs composing the bayt, and changes from couplet to couplet), is essentially a Persian invention ;and one tradition as to the earliest poem composed in Persian points definitely to the quatrain (first called dri-bayti and afterwards rubd'i) as the oldest indigenous verse-form produced in frin. Mystical = See p. 400 of my previous volurne. * This tradition is given in its most familiar version by Dawlatshgh, pp. 30-31 of my edition, and in a more credible and circumstantial Corm in the rare British Museum MS. of the Mu'ajjani fi ma1dyiriaslt'dri'l-'Ajam of Shams-i-Qays, ff. 49-50 @p. 88-89 of my forthcoming edition). I RHETORIC OF THE PERSIANS 19 poetry, so common from the twelfth century onwards, is, at the early period which we are now discussing, rare and undeveloped. I In order to avoid constant digressions and explanations in the following chapters, it may be well to give in this place a general account of the varieties of literary com- Verse-forms and rhetoric of the position recognised by the Persians, the rhetorical Persians. figures of which they make such frequent use, and the metres employed in their poetry. Of these and other kindred matters I should have considered it necessary to treat more fully had it not been for the admirable account of them prefixed by my friend the late Mr. E. J. W. Gibb to his monumental History of Ottoman Poetry, of which the first volume opens with a general discussion on Oriental thought, taste, poetry, and rhetoric, which applies not only to Turkish, . but also to Persian, and, in large measure, to Arabic and other Muhammadan languages also. These Prolegomena of Mr. Gibb's (especially ch. ii, treating of Tradition, Philosophy, and Mysticism, and ch. iii, treating of Verse-forms, Prosody, and Rhetoric, pp. 33-124) form one of the best introductions to the study of Muhammadan literature with which I am acquainted, and should be read by every student of this subject. Other excellent treatises are Gladwin's Dissertations on the Rhetoric, Prosody, and Rhyme of the Persian~(Calcutta, 1801) ; Riickert's Grarnmatik, Poetik, und Rhetorik der Perser (originally published in 1827-28 in vols. xi-xliv of the Wiener Jahrdiicher, and re-edited by Pertsch in a separate volume in 1874) ; Blochmann's Prosody of the Perjians (Calcutta, 1872) ; and, for the comparisons used by the erotic poets, Huart's annotated translation of the Anlsu'l-'Ushshriq, or "Lover's Companion, of Sharafu'd-Din Rhml. Persian works on these subjects are, of course, numerous : Farrukhi, a con- temporary of Firdawsi, composed one (mentioned by Dawlat- shdh, pp. 9 and 57 of my edition, and also by HAjji Khalifa, 20 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTORY , ed. Fliigel, vol. ii, p. 277), entitled Tarjunza'nu'l-BaldgIla ("The Interpreter of Eloquence"), while Bahrdmi of Sarakhs, who lived about the same time, wrote two treatises, strongly recommended by the author of the Four Discourses (p. 50 of the tirage-Apart of my translation), entitled respectively "The Goal of Prosodists" (Ghbyatu'l-'Aritqliyyin) and "The Thesaurus of Rhyme " (Kanzu'l-Qdjya). These works appear to be lost, or at least no copies are known to exist; and of extant Persian treatises on these subjects the "Gardens of Magic" (Hada''iqu's- Silir)~of RashIdu'd-Din WatwAt (died A.D. 1182) and the already mentioned Mu'ajjam of Shams-i-Qays (the rare old MS. marked Or. 2,814 in the British Museum), which was composed during the thirteenth century (soon after A.H. 614 =A.D. 1217-18), seem to be the oldest. I shall speak first of Rhetoric ('llmu'l-Badiiyi'), choosing my examples chiefly from the "Gardens of Magic," but some- times from other sources, and departing from The Science of ~h~t~~i~.WatwAt's arrangement where this seems to me to be faulty. I shall also endeavour to illustrate the different rhetorical figures, so far as possible, by English examples, in order that the nature of each figure may be more readily apprehended by the English reader. Prose (nathr) is of three kinds-simple or unornate ('drf, "naked ") ; cadenced (murajyaz), which has metre without rhyme ; and rhymed (murajja'), which has rhymeRecognlsed varletiesof without metre. Concerning the first variety prose. nothing need be said. The second demands more attention, since its recognition as a separate species of prose depends on what may be described as a theological dogma. Much of the Qur'An is written in rhymed prose, and here and The edition which I use is that lithographed at Tihrin in A.H. 1302, at the beginning of the works of Qi'bni. VARIETIES OFPERSIANPROSE 21 there it happens that a verse falls into one of the recognised metres, as in s4ra ii, 78-79 :- TItumnza aqrartum, wa anlum taskhadin, Thunttna antum hdluM'i taqtuldn, which scans in the Ramal metre, i.e., the foot fd'ilrftun (----) repeated six times in the bayt or verse and apocopated to fri'ilit (---) at the end of each miir6' or hemistich. Now the Prophet's adversaries used to call him a "mad poet," which description he vehemently repudiated ;and hence it became necessary for his followers to frame a definition of poetry which would not apply to any verse or portion of the Qur'in. And since, as we have seen, certain verses of the Quryin have both rhytne and metre, it became necessary to add a third condition, namely, that there must exist an intention (quid) on the part of the writer or speaker to produce poetry. It is, therefore, spontaneous or involuntary poetry, occurring in the midst of a prose discourse, and reckoned as prose because it is not produced with intention, which is called murajjaz. The other 'classical instance, occurring in a traditional saying of the Prophet's, is :- Al-karimu 'bnu '1-karimi 'brzt '1-karimi 'bni 'I-karim, which also scans in the Ramal (octameter) metre. The third variety of prose (musajja', or rhymed) is very common in ornate writing in all the Muhammadan languages. Three kinds are recognised, called respectively mutawlizi (" parallel " or "concordant "), mutarraf (" lop-sided "), and mutawrizin ("sytnmetrical"). In the first kind the rhymi~~gwords ending two successive clauses agree in measure (LC., scansion) and number of letters, as, for example, in the tradition of the Prophet :Allahurnma ! I'li kulla munjiqin khalafnn, wa kulla mumsikin talaf"" ! ("0 God ! give every spender a successor, and every miser destruction "); or, as we might say in English, a Give the spender health, and the lender wealth," In the second kind the rhyming words in two or more successive 22 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTR ODUCTURY clauses differ in measure and number of letters, as though we should say in English, "He awakes to reprieve us from the aches which grieve us." In the third kind (common to verse and prose), the words in two or more successive clauses cor- respond in measure, each to each, but do not rhyme, as in the Qur'dn, su'ra xxxvii, I I 7-1 I8 : Wa Iftayndhuma'l-Kitdba 'f-mustabin: wa hadayndhuma 'i-Jircita 'l-mustaqim. An English example would be : "He came uplifted with joy, he went dejected with woe." The best European imitations of rhymed prose which 1 have seen are in German, and some very ingenious translations of this sort from the Maqdmrit, or "Sdances," of Badi'u'z-Zamh al-Harnadhini (died A.D. 1007-8 in He&) may be seen in vol. ii of Von Kremer's admirable Cufturgeschichte, pp. 471-475. The following short extract will serve as a specimen :- "Seine A?ttwort auf diescrt Sckreibebricfwar halt und schneidend- und ich, jedc weitere Bcriilzrurzg vermeiderzd,-liess ihn in seirtem Dunkel schalten-und legte ihrz nach seiizem Bugc in Faltert,-seirt Arzder~kenaber liischte ich aus dem Gediichtrtisssclzrein,-sehten Namerc warf ich in dcn Stronz hinein." George Puttenham, in his Artc of English Poesie (1589 : Arber's reprint, 1869, p. 184) calls this figure Omoioteleton, or cc Like loose," and gives the following prose example :- "Aiiscltaunces ought noi to be lamerztcd, But rather by wisedorrze rlt time prevented: For such mishajfes as be remedilesse, To sorrow them it is but foolishnesse: Yet are we all so frayle of nature, As to be greeved with every displeasure." Eleven different verse-forms, or varieties of poem, are enumerated by Riickert (ed. Pertsch, p. 55) as recognised in Persian by the author of the Haft Qulzum or Verse-fonns recognisedby "Seven Seas" ; to wit, the ghazal or ode, the the Persians. qallda, "purpose-poem " or elegy, the tashbib, the qit'a or fragment, the rubd'l or quatrain, the fard or "unit," VARIETIES OF PERSIAN VERSE 23 the mathnawl or double-rhyme, the tar-1'-band or "return-tie," the tarkib-band or "composite-tie," the mustazdd or "comple- mented," and the musammaf ;to which may be added the murabba' or "foursome," the mukhammas or "fivesome," &c., up to the mu'ashshar or cc tensome," the "foursome," "five- some," and "sixsome " being by far the commonest. ' There is also the muwashshah, which was very popular amongst the Moors of Spain and the Maghrib, but is rarely met with in Persian. The mulamma', "patch-work," or "macaronic " poem, composed in alternate lines or couplets in two or more different languages, has no separate form, and will be more suitably considered when we come to speak of Yerse-subjects, or the classification of poems according to matter. The classification adopted in the Haft Qulzum (and also by Gladwin) is neither clear nor satisfactory. The toshblb, for instance, is merely that part of a qasldu which describes, to quote Gladwin, "the season of youth (shabdb) and beauty, being a description of one's own feelings in love ; but in common use,it implies that praise which is bestowed on any- thing [other than the person whose praises it is the 'purpose ' or object of the poet to celebrate, to which praises the tashbib merely serves as an introduction], and the relation of circum- stances, whether in celebration of love or any other subject." The fard ("unit "or hemistich) and the qit'a ("fragment "), as well as the bayt (or couplet, consisting of two hemistichs), have also no right to bt reckoned as separate verse-forms, since the first and last are the elements of which every poem con- sists, and the "fragment " is merely a piece of a gaffdo, though it may be that no more of the qarida was ever written, and, indeed, the productions of some few poets, notably Ibn Yamin (died A.D. 1344-45), consist entirely of such "fragments." Again, the two forms of band, or poem in strophes separated either by a recurrent verse, or by verses which, though differ- ent, rhyme with one another and not with the verses of the preceding or succeeding band, may well be classed together ;as 24 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTORY may also the "foursome," "fivesome," and other forms of mul- tiple poem. The muwashshah, again, like the murammat and muraf~a',is merely an ornate gasida or ghazal of a particular kind. Before attempting a more scientific and natural classi- fication of the varieties of Persian verse, it is, however, necessary to say a few more words about the elements of which it consists. The unit in every species of poem is the bayt, which con- sists of two sy~n~netricalhalves, each called mi!rcfC, and com- prises a certain number of feet, in all save the The Bagf and theMitrr+.. rarest cases either eight (when the bayt is called muthamman or "octameter ") or six (in which case it is called musaddas or "hexameter "). Into the elements composing the foot (viz., the watad or "peg," the sabab or "cord," and the fa'sila or "stay ") we need not enter, only pausing to observe that, owing to a fanciful analogy drawn between the baytu'sh-sha'r, or "house of hair" (i.e., the tent of the nomad Arabs), and the baytu'sh-shiCr,or verse of poetry, they, as well as most of the other technical terms of the Arabian Prosody (substantially identical with the Prosody of the Persians, Turks, and other Muhammadan nations), are named after parts of the tent. Thus the tent, or baytu'sh-sha'r, looked at from in front, consists of two flaps (mi;rrfc) which together constitute the door; and so the word mipi' is also used in Prosody to denote each of the two half-verses which make up the ba~tu'sh-shi'r. Various reasons (which will be found set forth in detail at pp. 20-21 of Blochmann's Persian Prosody) are adduced to account for this curious comparison or analogy, tlie prettiest being that, as the baytu'sh-sha'r, or "house of hair," shelters the beautiful girls of the nomad tribe, so the baytu'sh- shi'r, or "verse of poetry," harbours the "virgin thoughts" (abkcfr-i-afkrir) of the poet. In English the term bayt in poetry is generally rendered by "couplet," and tlie word miird' by cchemistich." This seems tp me an unfortunate nomen- clature, since it suggests that the bayt is two units and the misrciChalf a unit, and consequently that four, instead of two, CLASSIFICATION OF VERSE FORMS 25 of the latter go to make up one of the former. It would therefore seem to me much better to render bayt by "verse," and mifrcf' by "half-verse," though there would be no objec- tion to continuing to call the latter "hemistich" ir we could agree to call the bayt, or verse, stichos; in which case the rubd'l, or quatrain, which consists of four hemistichs, or two stichoi (hence more accurately named by many Persians du- baytl), would be the distich. In any case it is important to remember that the bayt is the unit, and that the terms hex- ameter " (musaddas) or "octameter " (muthamman) denote the number of feet in the bayt, and that, since all the bayts in a poem must be equal in length, that combination of hexameters aild pentameters which is so common in Latin verse is impos- sible in Persian. In the course of prose works like the Gulistrin a single bayt, or even a single mijrd', is often introduced to give point to some statement or incident, and such may have been composed for that sole purpose, and not detached from a longer poetical composition. The mijr6' is in this case often called a ford, or "unit." So much being clearly understood, we may proceed to the classification of the various verse-forms. The primary division depends on whether the rhyme of the bayt is, so to Classification of Persian say, internal (the two mifrrf's composing each baytverse-forms. rhyming together), or final (the bayts throughout the poem rhyming together, but their component mip-6's not rhyming, as a rule, save in the matla', or opening verse). These two primary divisions may be called the "many-rhymed" (represented only by the mathnawi, or "couplet-poem ") and the one-rhymed " (represented by the qailda, or purpose- poem," and its "fragment," the qii'a; the ghazal, or ode ; and the tarj1'-band and tarkib-band, or strophe-poems ; to which, perhaps, we should add the rubrf'i, or quatrain). What I have called the "multiple poems " (from the murabba' or foursome" to the mu'ashshar or "tensome ") must be placed in a separate class. 26 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTORY Concerning the many-rhymed poem, or mathnawl, little need be said, since most European poetry which is not written in blank verse belongs to this category. The rhyme, as has been said, is contained in the bayt, and changes from bayt to bayt. Tennyson's Locksley Hall furnishes an admirable example in English (taking accent for quantity, which the genius of our lan- guage requires), since it represents as closely as is possible what would be technically described in Persian Prosody as a mathnawf poem written in the metre called Ramal-i-muthamman-i- tnal~dhlif, or the "apocopated octameter Ramal," viz. :- twice repeated in the bayt. Here are the two first bayts (four lines of the English) scanned in this Persian fashion :- amrades, leave me I here a littl6, I while as yet 'tis I Barly m6rn I : LBave me here, And I when you wint me, I sohnd up6n th6 I b6gle h6rn. 1 'Tis the pl6ce, ind I 911 arolind it, I is of 61d, th6 ( chrlews c611, I Dreary gleims 6 I b6ut the m6orlind I fljing 6v6r ( Mcksley Hill. 1 " IAll long narrative and systematised didactic poems in Persian, like the Shrihnrima, or "Epic of Kings," of Firdawsi ;the Panj Ganj, or "Five Treasures," of NiGArni of Ganja ;the Ha) Awrang, or "Seven Thrones," of JBmi ; and the great Mystical Mathnawi of Jalilu'd-Din Riimi, are composed in this form, which is of Persian invention, and unknown in classical Arabic poetry, though occasionally employed (under the name of muzdawaj or "consorted ") in post-classical Arabic verse (late tenth century onwards) by Persian writers.1 For an example of Arabic mathnawt' or muzdawaj, see vol. iv of thc Yalimatu'd-Dahr,p. 23 (Damascus edition). THE GHAZAL OR ODE 27 We now' pass to the one-rhymed forms of verse, wherein the same rhyme runs through the whole poem, and comes at The Ghauri. the end of each bayt, while the two half-verses composing the bayt do not, as a rule, rhyme together, save in the matla', or opening verse of the poem. The two most important verse-forms included in this class are the ghazal, or ode, and the qaflda, or elegy. The same metres are used for both, and in both the first bayt, or mayla', has an internal rhyme, i.c., consists of two rhyming mi!rrf's, while the remaining rhymes are at the ends of the bayts only. The ghazal differs from the qaslda mainly in subject and length. The former is generally erotic or mystical, and seldom exceeds ten or a dozen bayts ;the latter may be a panegyric, or a satire, or it may be didactic, philosophical, or religious. In later days (but not, I think, before the Mongol Invasion) it became customary for the poet to introduce his takhallu:, nom de guerrc, or "pen-name," in the last bayt, or magfa', of the ghazal, which is not done in the qaslda. As an example of the ghazal I give the following rendering of the very well- known ode from the Dlwcin of HAfifi of ShirAz which begins :- Agar dn Turk-i-Shirdd bi-dust drad dil-i-mdrd Bi-khdl-i-Hitrduwash bakhsham Samarqa~tdu Buklzdrd-rd. "If that unkindly Shir6z Turk' would take my heart within her hand, I'd give Bukhlr6 for the mole upon her cheek, or Samarqand ! Sdqi,' what wine is left for me pour, for in Heaven thou wilt not see Musalli's sweet rose-l~aunted walks, nor Ruknibid's 3 wave- dimpled strand. The poet calls his sweetheart a "Turk" because the Turks are cele- brated both for their beauty and their cruelty, Cupbearer. 3 Two suburbs of Shirk. 28 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTORY Alas ! those maids, whose wanton ways such turmoil in our c~ty raise, Have stolen patience from my heart as spoil is seized by Tartar band. Our Darling's beauty hath, indeed, of our imperfect love no need ; On paint and pigment, patch and line, a lovely face makes no demand. Of Wine and Minstrel let us speak, nor Fate's dark riddle's answer seek, Since none hath guessed and none shall guess enigmas none may understand. That beauty, waxing day by day, of Joseph needs must lead astray The fair Zulaykhi from the veils for modest maids' seclusion planned. Auspicious youths more highly prize the counsels of the old and wise Than life itself: then take, 0 Heart, the counsels ready to thy hand ! You spoke me ill; I acquiesced. God pardon you 1 'twas for the best ; Yet scarce such bitter answer suits those rubies sugar-sweet and bland ! Your ode you've sung, your pearls you've strung; come, chant it sweetly, HQfi& mine ! That as you sing the sky may fling the Pleiades' bejewelled band !" The great length of most qa!ldar makes it almost impossible to give an English verse-translation which shall preserve the one-rhymed character throughout, though manyThe Qafida. such translations of Turkish qaildas may be seen by the curious in such matters in the late Mr. E. J. W. Gibb's great History af Otto~tzanPoetry. To preserve the original form (both as regards metre and rhyme) of whatever poem he translated was with this great scholar an unvarying principle ; but I, having less skill in verse-making, have fclt myself con- strained as a rule to abandon this plan, and translate qafldas, and sometimes even ghazals, as though they were mathnawls. I am emboldened to make such changes in rhyme and metre by the example of the Orientals themselves, for, as I have observed at pp. 464-5 of the Prolegomena to this volume, at the time when such verse-translations from Arabic into Persian and vice vers8 were common feats of ingenuity and tests of scholarship in the two languages, it was usual to adopt a different metre in translating, and to change mathnawl Persian verses (e.g., in al-Bundbri's Arabic translation of the Shrihndma) into the qasfda form in Arabic, notwithstanding the fact that both languages have a common system of Prosody, which, of course, does not extend to English. If, then, these masters of style and language permitted themselves these liberties, why should we, who are in every way placed at a disadvantage compared with them, deny ourselves a similar freedom ? However, since we are here speaking of verse-forms, I shall give a few specimens from qa$z'as in the proper monorhythmic form, which I have not found it possible to maintain in my translations for any complete qasfda, the qaslda being, as I have said, always of considerably greater length than the ode or ghazal, and vften extending to more than a hundred bayts. My first specimen consists of six bayts taken from a marthiya (threnody, or qaslda of mourning) composed by Shaykh Sa'di of Shirdz on the sack of Baghddd by the Mongols and the cruel murder of the last 'AbbBsid Caliph, al-Musta'sim bi'ilbh, and his family. The text, which is interesting as showing the effect ~roducedon the mind of a contemporary Muslim by this horrible catastrophe, is taken from vol. i of Ziyb Bey's Kharribrit (Constantinople, A.H. 1291, p. 156). The metre is again the apocopated octameter Ramal. I give the six first of-- the twenty-one bayts which the poem comprises- specimen of a Asmdit-ld haqq buwad gar kkdn bi-rizad bar zaminMarthiya, orThrenody. Bar aawdl-i-mulk-i-Musfa'sim,Amiru'l-Mti'minin. Well it were if from the heavens tears of blood on earth should flow For the Ruler of the Faithful, al-Musta'sim, brought so low. 30 RETROSPECTIVE AND lN7XODUCTOX Y If, Muhammad, at the Judgement from the dust thy head thou'lt raise, Raise it now, behold the Judgement fallen on thy folk below I Waves of blood the dainty thresholds of the Palace-beauties whelm ; While from out my heart the life-blood dyes my sleeve with hues of woe.' Fear vicissitudes of Fortune ;fear the Sphere's revolving change ; Who could dream that such a splendour such a fate should overthrow ? Raise your eyes, 0 ye who once upon that Holy House did gaze, Watching Kh6ns and Roman Czsars cringing to its portals go. Now upon that self-same threshold where the Kings their fore- heads laid, From the children of the Prophet's Unclemstreanls of blood do flow I" The above, however, is far less typical of the classical qaslda, beginning with the tushbib already described, and passing, in the bayt known technically as the guriz-gdh, or "tran- Tg$F sition-verse," into the mndi!~a, or panegyric proper, than a very fine qasida (No. 29 in Kazimirski's edition, pp. 73-76) by the poet Minlichihri, a younger coil- temporary of Firdawsf. This poem comprises seventy-two bayts, of which I give only a selection, indicating in each case the position of the translated verses in the complete text by pre- fixing the number which they bear in it. The metre is the apocopated hexameter Haznj (----I ----I---1, which I have been obliged to shorten by one syllable in niy translation. It begins- Aldyd khaymagi, kl~aymafir6 hit, Ki fish-dhang bircin shud zi malizil. The Muslim poets suppose that when one weeps long and bitterly all the supply of tears is exhausted, and blood comes in their place, whence the red and bloodshot appearance of the eyes of him who has wept much. a Al-'Abbis b. 'Abdu'l-Muttalib,,the ancestor of the Caliphs called afler him 'Abbisid. I. "0 tentsman, haste, and strike the tent, I pray I The caravan's already under, way ; 2. The drummer sounds already the first drum; ,"zf,"f!22.Their loads the drivers on the camels lay. 3. The evening-prayer is nigh, and lo 1 to-night The sun and moon opposed do stand at bay, 4. Save that the moon climbs upwards through the sky, While sinks the sun o'er Babel's mountains grey, 5. Like to two scales of golden balance, when One pan doth upwards and one downwards weigh." The poet next describes his parting with his sweetheart. whom he addresses as'follows :- 6. "' 0 silver cypress I Little did I think To see so swiftly pass our trysting-day l 7. We are all heedless, but the moon and sun Are heedful things, whose purposes ne'er stray. 8. My darling, wend thee hence, and weep no more, For fruitless are the hopes of lovers aye. 9. With parting Time is pregnant; know ye not Needs must the pregnant bring to birth one day ?' 10. When thus my love beheld my state, her eyes Rained fears like drops which fall when lightnings play. 11. That she crushed pepper held within her hand And cast it in her eyes thou wouldest say. 12. Drooping and trembling unto me she came Like throat-cut bird, whose life-blood ebbs away, 13. Around my neck like sword-belt flung her arms, And on my breast like belt depending lay. 14. '0 cruel,' cried she; 'by my soul I swear My envious foes rejoice through thee this day I 15. Wilt thou, what time the caravan returns, Return therewith, or still in exile stay? 16. Perfect I deemed thee once in all thy deeds, But now in love imperfect, wel-a-way 1"' The poet again-endeavours to console his beloved, who finally departs and leaves him alone. He looks round the caravansaray, and sees "neither beast nor man, neither rider .. nor pedestrian," save his own camel, fretting "like a demon chained hand and foot." Having arranged its harness, he 32 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTORY mounts, and it springs forward on the path whereby the caravan has departed, "measuring with its feet the stages like a surveyor measuring the land." He enters the desert- "a desert so cold and rugged that none who enters it comes forth again "-alid describes the biting wind "which freezes the blood in the veins," and the silver patches of snow on the golden sand. Then comes the dawn, blinding him with its glare, and causing the snow to melt "as one who wastes of consumption," and the sticky mud to cling to his camel's feet like strings of isinglass. At length the caravan which he has striven to overtake appears encamped before him in the plain ;he sees the lances of the escort planted in the ground like ears of wheat in a cornfield, and hears the tinkle of the camel-bells, sweet to his ears as the nightingale's song. He then continues :- 48. "Then to my gallant beast I cried aloud, '0friend of talent ! Slower now, I pray I 49. Graze, sweet to thee as ambergris the grass I Walk proudly, thou whom iron thews did stay ! 50. Traverse the desert, climb the mountain ridge, Beat down the stages, cut the miles away! , 51. Then set me down at that Wazir's high court* * * * * * The ~~~l~-,qrfi,,52. Whose lofty aims great things and small dis- or Tnkhnll~rg. play." * * * * * 56. BIir Mas'Gda glories in his glorious time As did the Prophet in NGshirwin's day.3 This verse is the grcriz-gdh or "transition-verse." I have here cotn- bined the first rnisrri' of 51 and the second of 52 in one bayt, to avoid (somewhat pusillanimously, perhaps) an allusion which I do not fully understand to some event in the life of the Arabian poet al-A'shi. 9 1.e. Sultin Mas16d ibn Mahm6d of Ghazna, who reigned from A.D. 1030-40. 3 Khusraw An6shirwin (Anbshak-riibh in Pahlawi) the Sisinian (reigned A.D. 531-78). He is still a proverb for justice in the East, and the Prophet is reported to have said, 'I I was born in the days of the just King," meaning him. 57. The purse as rich as Korahx to him comes, The beggar comes in suppliant's array ; 58. The beggar leaves him gold-lined as a purse, The purse it is which empty goes away:' In conclusion I give the Iast seven bayts of this qarlda, wherein the poet craves his patron's favour and The Mndlba, orpanegyrlc generosity, and prays for his long life. A hint proper. that a reward would be acceptable to the poet (which always comes near the end of the poem), is called, when neatly introduced and expressed, hum-i-falab, or "beauty of demand." The last three bayts of the poem also illustrate the figure called husn-i-maqta', or "beauty of conclusion," which, in Gladwin's words (p. 62), "is when the poet exerts himself in the concluding verses, and ends with something striking, in order that the reader map 1eave.off with satisfaction, and be induced to excuse any inaccuracies which may have occurred in the course of the poem." He adds very truly that "in the qasida the husn-i-maq[a' is generally used in implori,ng blessing." 66. "0Master I Hither do I come in hope To gain some gleanings from thy bounteous sway. 67. To thee come flocking ever men of parts, For like to like doth surely find the way. 68. Provide me with some place, and thou shalt see Di'bil and A'shdg envious of my lay I 69. But if of serving thee I be deprived, My pen 1'11 burn, my fingers hew away. 70. So long as sounds the dove's and woodcock's cry, And name of hawk and Simurgh 3 with us stay, Korah, or QirGn, is believed by the Muslims to have been immensely rich, and to have been punished by God at the prayer of Moses because he refused to disburse money. "As rich as Qirlin " is, therefore, equiva- lent to "as rich as Cresus!' Two Arabic poets. The first, who helonged to the Shi'a sect died in A.D. 860. The second, al-A1shd Ma'm6n b. Qays, was contemporary with the Prophet. 3 The Simurgh or 'Anqd is a gigantic mythical bird of great wisdom, supposed to inhabit the Mountain of Qif. 4 34 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTOR Y 71. Thy frame be lasting and thine eye be bright, Thy heart be pure, thy luck increasing aye I 72. God give me Bashshbr'sx talent, and the tongue Of Ibnu Muqbil, thee to praise alway !" We now come to the qit'a, and for this few words will suffice. Essentially (as its name implies) it is, as '::$g,"nF has been already said, merely a detached "frag- ment" of a qalida, but it may be an uncompleted fragment-a torso, so to speak ;or it may be so far complete in itself that the poet never intended to add to it. Nay, in some cases its style and subject-matter are such that it was evidently intended from the first to be an independent poem. The following "fragment" by Anwari (died A.D. 1191) may suffice as a specimen :- "' Have patience ; patience will perform thy work Quickly and well,' to me a comrade said; 'The water to the river will return; Thine aims shall speed as never they have sped.' I said : 'Suppose the water does return, What boots it, if the fish meanwhile be dead 7'" This "fragment" is evidently complete in itsel:, and no addition to it can ever have been contemplated. The rubdct or quatrain, again, is formally two bayts (whence called dzi-baytl) or four hemistichs (whence called rubcfci) from the beginning of a qa$da or ghazal written in ,:;,"[:$:.certain varieties of a particular metre, the Hazaj ; but, like the epigram, it is always complete in itself. FitzGerald's beautiful renderings of the quatrains of 'Umar Khayyim have rendered this verse-form so familiar that it is hardly necessary to say more of it in this place. As 1 have observed, however, that some admirers of FitzGerald's 'Umar imagine that quatrains can be linked together to form Bashshbr b. Burd, the blind sceptic and poet, who, though excelling in Arabic verse, was of Persian, and, as he boasted, of royal descent. He was put to death in A.D. 783. THE Q UATRAIN OR. R UBAV 35 a poem, I should perhaps emphasise the fact that the effect of continuity in FitzGerald's version is due to his arrangement and selection of the rubdcis which he translated, and that quatrains are always quite independent and complete in them- selves, and, in the collected works of Persian poets, are never arranged otherwise than alphabetically, according to the final letter of the rhyme. The quatrain metres, as we said above, are generally special derivatives of the Hazaj, and the first, second, and fourth rnifrri's must rhyme, while the third need not, and generally does not. The two following quatrains extemporised by Mu'izzi for the Selj6q Malikshhh (whose Poet-laureate he afterwards became) are not, perhaps, of any special literary merit, but are historically interesting, since we have in the Four Discourses (pp. 67-70 of the tirage-d-part) the poet's own account, given to the author of that work, of the circumstances under which they were composed. He says :- "My father Burhini, the Poet-laureate (may God be merciful to him!) passed away from this transitory to that eternal world in the town of Qazwin in the early part of the reign of improvisation Malikshih, entrusting me to the King in this verse, from the ChohrfrMagdlb. Since then become famous :- Malt raftam, u farzatzd-i-man dmad kkalaf-i--gidq; Urd bi-Klzudh ti bi-K'ltudhwand sipurdam.' '1 am flitting, but I leave a son behind me, And commend him to my God and to my King.' "So my father's salary and allowances were transferred to me, and I became Malikshih's Court-poet, and spent a year in the King's This verse, supplemented by several others, which are undoubtedly spurious, is commonly ascribed (e.g., by Dawlatshih, p. 59 of my edition) to the Niaimu'l-Mulk, who, as we learn from the next paragraph of this extract, "had no opinion of poets, because he had no skill in their art!' One of these spurious verses which gives his age as ninety-four at the time of his death (he being actually eighty at most) is alone enough to discredit the story, apart from the small probability that one who had been mortally wounded by an assassin's knife would be in the humour to compose verses. This is a good example of the universal tendency of mankind to ascribe well-known stories or verses to notable men. 36 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTOR Y service ; yet was I unable to see him save from a distance, nor did I get one dirrdr of my salary or one maund of my allowances, while my expenditure was increased, I became involved in debt, and my brain was perplexed by my affairs. For that great minister, the NidJimu'l-Mulk (may God be merciful to him !), had no opinion of poets, because he had no skill in their art; nor did he pay any attention to any one of the religious leaders or mystics. "One day-it was the eve of the day on which the new moon of Ramadin was due to appear, and I had not a farthing to meet all the expenses incidental to that month and the feast which follows it -I went thus sad at heart to the Amir 'Ali Farimarz 'Ala'u'd-Dawla,' a man of royal parentage, a lover of poetry, and the intimate com- panion and son-in-law of the King, with whom he enjoyed the higl~csthonour, and before whom he could speak boldly, since he held high rank under that administration. And he had already been my patron. I said, 'May my lord's life be long 1 Not all that the father could do can the son do, nor does that which accrued to the father accrue to the son. My father was a bold and energetic man, and was sustained by his art, and the martyred King Alp Arslin, the lord of the world, entertained the highest opinion of him. But what he could do that cannot I, for modesty forbids me. I have served this prince for a year, and have contracted debts to the extent of a thousand diltdrs, and have not received a farthing. Crave permis- sion, then, for thy servant to go to Nishiphr, and discharge his debts, and live on that which is left over, and express his gratitude to this victorious dynasty.' "'Thou speakest truly,' replied Amir 'Ali: 'we have all been at fault, but this shall be so no longer. The King, at the time of Evening Prayer, will go up to look for the moon. Thou must be present there, and we will see what Fortune will do! Thereupon he at once ordered me to receive a hundred diradrs to defray my Ramadin expenses, and a purse containing this su~nin Nishipfir coinage was forthwith brought and placed before me. So I returned, mightily well pleased, and made my preparations for Ramadin, and at the time of the second prayer went to the King's pavilion. It chanced that 'Ala'u'd-Dawla arrived at the very same moment, and I paid my respects to him. 'Thou hast done exceedingly well,' said he, 'and hast come punctually.' Then he dismounted and went in before the King. "At sundown the King came forth from his pavilion, with a cross- Probably 'Ali b. Farrimarz the K.ikwayhid is intended. See Lane's Mrrharrrmadatz Dyilnsties. p. 145. THE QUATRAIN OR RuBA'I' bow in his hand and 'AIPu'd-Dawla on his right hand. I ran forward to do obeisance. Amir 'Ali continued the kindnesses he had already shown me, and then busied himself in looking for the moon. The King, however, was the first to see it, whereat he was mightily pleased. Then 'AlP'u'd-Dawla said to me, '0son of Burhini, say something appropriate,' and I at once recited these two verses * :- Ay Mdh I chzi abruwdn-t-Ydri, gii'f, Yd nay, chti kamdn-i-Shahriydri g#{, Na'li zada az zar-i-'iydd, gti'i, Bar gdsh-i-sipihr gzishwdd, gii'i. 'Methinks, 0Moon, thou art our Prince's bow, Or his arched eyebrow, which doth charm us so, Or else a horse-shoe wrought of gold refined, Or ring from Heaven's ear depending low.' 'I When I had submitted these verses, Amir 'Ali applauded, and the King said: 'Go,loose from the stables whichever horse thou pleasest.' When I was close to the stable, Amir 'Ali designated a horse which was brought out and given to my attendants, and which proved to be worth 300 dindrs of Nishiphr. The King then went to his oratory, and I performed the evening prayer, after which we sat down to ineat. At the table Amir 'Ali said : '0son of Burhini 1 Thou hast not yet said anything about this favour conferred on thee by the lord of the world. Compose a quatrain at once I' I there- upon sprang to my feet and recited these two verses :- Chzirr dtask-i-klzdiir-i-mard Shdh bi-did, Az khJk ward bar zabar-i-mdh kashfd; Chzin db yaki tardna az man shunid, Chdn bdd yaki markab-r-khdgam bakhshid. 'The King beheld the fire which in me blazed : Me from low earth above the moon he raised: From me a verse, like water fluent, heard, And swift as wind a noble steed conferred.' "When I recited these verses 'Alh'u'd-Dawla warmly applauded me, and by reason of his applause the King gave me a thousand dindrs. Then 'AlPu'd-Dawla said: 'He hath not yet received his salary and allowances. -To-morrow I will sit by the Minister until As has been already said, the quatrain, as consisting of two verses, is called dzi-bayti, or, as consisting of four hemistichs, rubd'i. 38 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTORY he writes a draft for his salary on Isfahin, and orders his allowances to be paid out of the treasury.' Said the King : 'Thou must do it, then, for none else has sufficient boldness. And call this poet after my title.' Now the Icing's title was lClulizzu'd-Dzcrzydwn'd-Din,' so Amir 'Ali called me Mu'izzi. 'Anfir Mu'izzi,' said the Icing [cor- recting him]. And this noble lord was so zealous for me that next day, by the time of the first prayer, I had received a thousand dirtdrs as a gift, twelve hundred more as allowances, and an order for a thousand maunds of corn. And when the month of Ramadin was passed, he summoned me to a private audience, and caused me to become the ICing's boon-companion. So my fortune began to improve, and thenceforth he made enduring provision for me, and to-day whatever I have I possess by the favour of that Prince. May God, blcssed and exalted is He, rejoice his dust with the lights of His Mercy, by His Fs.vourand His Grace I" This anecdote further illustrates the importance attached in earlier days to the faculty of improvisation in poets, and several other striking instances are given in this same Improvisationhighly esteemed book, the Chahcir Maqd/a. Thus (pp. 56-58) In early times. when Sultin Mahmiid of Ghazna had cut off the locks of his favourite Aydz in a moment of drunken excite- ment, and, partly from remorse, partly from the after-effects of his drinking-bout, was next day in so evil a temper that none dared approach him, the Poet-laureate 'Unsurf restored him to good humour by this quatrain :- Gar 'ayb-i-sar-i-zulf-i-butaz kdstarz-ast, Clti jL-yi bi-gltam ~zishastnnu kltdsla~z-ast8 Jd-yi (nral) u itisl~dtu Itgay kltwdstan-as/, K'drdstan-i-saw zi firdstarr-ast. "Though shame it bc a fair one's curls to shear, Why rise in wrath or sit in sorrow here 7 Rather rejoice, make merry, call for wine; When clipped the cypressa doth most trim appear." - * "The Glorifier of the World and the E'aith." Every poet in Persia assumes a "pen-name," nom de guerre, or takltallu~,which is most often derived from his patron's title, c$., Sa'di, Anwari, Niairni, &c. * The comparison of a tall and graceful beauty to a cypress is very comtnon in Persian anti Turkish poetry. STROPHE-POEMS 39 Another extemporised quatrain of Azraql's (Chahdr Maqrila, pp. 71-72) had an equally happy effect in calming the dangerous anger of his patron, the young King Tughdnshrih, whose temper had given way in consequence of his having thrown two ones instead of the two sixes he desired at a critical point in a game of backgammon. This quatrain ran :- Gar Shdh du shislr khwdst, du yak zakhm uffdd, Td ?art nu-bari ki ka'bafayn ddd nu-ddd; An zakhm ki kard ray-i-Shdhinshah ydd ' Dar kltidmal-i-Shdh rtiy bar khdk nihdd. "Reproach not Fortune with discourteous tricks If by the King, desiring double six, Two ones were thrown; for whomsoe'er he calls Face to the earth before him prostrate falls."' These two last quatrains have two points in common ;first, the four mi!rdcs all rhyme in both cases, whereas the third is in the quatrain commonly not rhymed ;secondly, both exhibit the rhetorical figure technically called husn-i-ta'lil (" poetical ztiology "), where a real effect is explained by an imaginary or fanciful reason. We must now briefly consider some of the remaining and less important verse-forms, viz., the two kinds of strophe-poem (the tarjic-band and tarkib-band), the various forms Theand Tarkibbartd.Taw-ba8d of multiple-poem (the murabbaC,mukhammar, &c.), the murammaf, and the mustazcid. The two kinds of strophe-poem both consist of a series of stanzas, each containing a variable, but equal, or nearly equal, number of couplets, all in one rhyme, these stanzas being separated from one another by a series of isolated verses which mark the end of each strophe. If the same verse (which in this case may be best described as a refrain) be repeated at the close of each band, or strophe, the poem is called a tarjfc- band, or return-tie ";if, on the other hand, the verses which In this translation I have departed from the proper quatrain rhyme. 40 RETROSPEC-TIYE AND lilrTRODD'CTOR Y conclude each strophe be different, each rhyming internally in a rhyme differing from that of the preceding and succeeding strophes, the poem is called a tarkib-band, or "composite tie." In both cases the metre is the same throughout. To translate in its entirety a poem of either of these two classes, having regard to the proper arrangement of the rhymes, is beyond my powers, but I here give a few lines from two successive strophes of a very celebrated and very beautiful tarj1'-band by Hiitif of Isfahdn, who flourished towards the end of the eighteenth century :- "0heart and soul a sacrifice to Thee, Before Thee all we have an off'ring free ! The heart, Sweetheart, we yield as service meet; The soul, 0Soul, we give right cheerfully. Scarce from Thy hands may we preserve our hearts, But at Thy feet surrender life with glee. The way to Thee is fraught with perils dire, And Thy love-sickness knows no remedy. Eyes for Thy gestures, ears for Thy commands, Servants with lives and hearts in hand are we. Would'st Thou have peace? Behold, our hearts are here I Would'st Thou have war? Our lives we offer Thee I * * * * * HE is alone, beside HIM there is none; No God there is but HE, and HE is One 1 * * * * * From Thee, 0 Friend, I cannot break my chain, Though limb from limb they hew my trunk amain. In truth, from us a hundred lives were meet; Half a sweet smile from Thee will ease our pain 1 0 father, cease to caution me of Love 1 This headstrong son will never prudence gain. Rather 'twere meet they should admonish those Who 'gainst Thy love admonish me in vain. Well do I know the way to Safety's street, But what can I, who long in bonds have lain? HE is alone, beside HIM there is none; No God there is but HE, and HE is one I" THE MUSAMMA T , 41 This poem comprises six strophes, separated by the above refrain, and contains in all (including the refrain-verse, five times repeated) about 148 verses, viz., 23 + I in the first strophe, 13 + I in the second, 17 + I in the third, 15 + I in the fourth, 18 + I in the fifth, and 57 in the sixth. If at the end of the second strophe, instead of having the satne verse repeated we had a different verse in a different rhyme, the two half-verses of which rhymed together, the result would be a tarklb-band.' It will be observed that each strophe begins like a qasida or ghazal, with a matla', or initial verse, of which the two halves rhyme together. The musummat, according to Riickert (p. 85 of Pertsch's edition), is a general term including all the varieties of multiple-poem, while the definition giren by The Musummat. Rashfdu'd-Din Watwiit identifies it with what the Moorish poets called muwashshah, where the milrci' has an internal rhyme, as in the following verses con- tained in my rendering of a poem ascribed to the Bibi heroine, Qurratu'l-'Ayp :- "The musk of Cathay might perfume gain from the scent those fragrant tresses rain, While those eyes demolish a faith in vain attacked by the pagans of Tartary. With you who despise both Love and wine for the hermit's cell and the zealot's shrine, What can I do ? For our faith divine ye hold as a thing of infamy I" Or all the early poets Miniichihri appears to have been fondest of the musammah which has been revived in quite modern times by Mirzi Diwari of Shfrdz. Two strophes from an unpublished musummat of the latter will suffice to illustrate the usual form of this variety of poem :- I The verses which form the bands of a tarkib-band must rhyme within themselves, and may, but need not, rhyme with one another. 42 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTORY "0Arab boy, God give you happy n-orn 1 The morning wine-cup give, for here's the dawn 1 Give to the Pole one draught, and I'll be sworn 'Twill cast you down the crown of Capricorn : You Ursa makes its ransom, tender fawn, When sphere-like round the wine-jar you rotate. Hast thou no wine ? Clasp close the wine-skin old, Then Arab-wise o'er head thy mantle hold, And, Iike the Arabs, skirt in girdle fold ; Mantle and wine-skin clasp in hand-grip bold, By wine-stained robe be wine-skin's bounty told ; And from thy lodging seek the Tavern's gate." The rhyme of this kind of musamma?, which is by far the cornmonest, may therefore be represented by the formula : a,a,a,a,a,x ;b,b,b,b,b,x; c,c,c,c,c,x, kc. Another form used by MinGchihrI consists of a series of strophes each containing six rhyming miira'r, according to the formula : a,a,a,a,a,a ; b,b,b,b,b,b, &c. It will thus be seen that the musummat of the former and most usual type is essentially a mdhammas, or ufivesome," save that generally in the true mukhammas the five lines, or half-verses, composing the opening stanza all rhyme together, after which the rhyme changes, save in the tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth lines or half-verses, which maintain the rhyme of the first stanza. Very often the basis of a multiple-poem is a ghazal of some other poet, to each bayt of which two more half-verses or miyri's are added to make a murabbac ("foursome "), three to make a mukhammas (" fivesome "), and so on. We can most easily illustrate these forms by taking the opening lines of the translation given at p. 31 supra of Minucliihri's qag.lda, as follows :- (Murabba', or dlFoursome!') The shades of evening mark the close of day; The sunset fades, the world grows cold and grey ; "0 tentsman, hasle, and strike the tents, I pray I The caravan's already under way." THE MULTIPLE-POEM In haste the travellers together come; Their voices rise like swarming bee-hive's hum; "The drummer sounds already the first drum ; Their loads the drivers on the camels lay." (Mukhammas, or Fivesome!') The shades of evening mark the close of day; The sunset fades, the world grows cold and grey; Across the plain the length'ning shadows play ; "0tenfsman, haste, and strike the tents, I pray/ The caravan's already under way." In haste the travellers together come; Sonie all unready, long expectant some ; 'l'heir voices rise like swarming bee-hive's hum ; The drur~zmersounds already the first drum; Their loads the drivers on the camels lay." The structure of the musaddas ('csixsome"), musabba' (" sevensome "), and the remaining multiple-poems is precisely similar to these, and need not be further illustrated. The mustazdd, or "increment-poem," is an ordinary quatrain, ode, or the likg, whereof each half-verse is followed by a short metrical line, not required to complete the sense TheMusfazhd. or metre of the poem to which it is appended ; these "increment-verses " rhyming and making sense to- gether like a separate poem. We may illustrate this verse- form by means of the poem used to illustrate the murabba' and the mukhammar. "0ienisman, haste, and strike the tents, I pray ;" The day grows late ; " The caravan's already under way ;" They will not wait. The drummer sourrds already the first drum ;" The mule-bells call ; Their loads the dlivets on the camels lay." Mate cries to mate. "The evening-prayer rs near, and lo I to- rtigltt " The sky is clear ; The sun and moon opposed do stand at bay," Beyond the gate- 44 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTXODUCTORY and so on. It will be observed that the sense and rhyme of the poem is complete without the increment, and vice versa. It is not, however, necessary that the multiple-poem or the incre- ment-poem should be based upon an earlier poem by some other author, for a poem may be composed originally in one of these forms.1 Besides the above classification by form, there is another classification (referring especially to the gagfda, whereof the scope is much wider and more varied than that Classlficatlon of any other verse-form, except, perhaps, the qit'aby subject. and the mathnawi) according to topic or subject. Thus a qarfda may be a panegyric (nzndlfla), or a satire (hnjw), or a death-elegy (tnarthiya), or philosopl~ical(!liRamiyya), or it may contain a description of spring (rablCiyq,a), or winter (shitd'iyya), or autumn (khizriniyj~a),or it may consist of a discussion between two personified opposites (e.g., night and day, summer and winter, lance and bow, heaven and earth, Persian and Arab, Muslim and Zoroastrian, heat and cold, or the like), when it is called a muna'&aru, "joust," or "strife- poem,''a or it may be in the form of a dialogue (su'dl u jawdb, "question and answer "), and so on. The "dialogue " also occurs in ghazals, of which also sundry other forms exist, such as the mulamma', or "patch-work " poem, where alternate lines or verses are in two (occasionally three) different languages, e.g., Arabic and Persian, or both of these and one of the dialects of Persian ;or we may have poems entirely in dialect, the so-called Fuhlawiyydt, or "Pahlawi " ballads, which were common down to the thirteenth century of our era, and not rare in later times. In addition to these, there is the muwash- 1 An excellent English ntustazn'd composed during the American Revolution will be found at p. 54 of Morgan's Macaroizic Poetry (New York, 1872). The poem with the increment is pro-English, but if the increment be removed, the sense is reversed, and it becomes strongly pro-American. See Dr. H. EthB's very interesting paper, Uebet persisclzen Tenzoncn, published in the Acts of the Berlin Oriental Congress of 1881,pp. 48-135. MACARONlC VERSE 45 ~hahor acrostic,' the mu'ammd or riddle, the 'lughz or enigma, the na&ira (which may be merely a "parallel," or imitation, or an actual parody), and the tadmfn, or quotation (literally, "insertion '3, where a poem by another author is taken as the basis, and added to, often in the spirit of parody. The only example of this last I can recollect in English is by Lewis Carroll, and occurs in his Phantasmagoria, afterwards re- published under the title of Rhyme? and Reason? This is a genuine ta~mkof the well-known poem beginning, "I never loved a dear gazelle," and the first verse runs, so far as I can recollect (for I have riot the book at hand) :- "I never loved a dear gazelle, Nor anything that cost me much : High prices profit those who sell, But why should I be fond of such?" Mention should also be made of the genuine "macaronic " poem, where Persian words are constructed and Macaronic treated as Arabic, just as, in the absurd schoolboy doggerel beginning :- -J "Patres conscripti took a boat and went to Philippi," English words are Latinized ;as in the line :- wOmrzesdrowndermnt, quii swim-away non fotuerunt!' Such "macaronic " verses and prose occur in Sa'di's facetirt, but there is a better instance in Ibn Isfandiydr's History of Tabaristdn (compiled about A.D. 1216) in a long qailda of seventy-four verses written by the Qhdf Hisham to satirise The Arabic mrrwashshah which was so popular in Andalusia and the Maghrib is different, and resembles the Persian musumma# already mentioned. "Taught" is, I believe, the correct reading, but of course it would not suit Lewis Carroll's tadmin. 46 RETROSPECTI YE AND INTROD UCTOR Y one of his contemporaries. This poem is given in full, with the variants, at pp. 81-85 of my abridged translation of this History, published in 1905 as the second volume of the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series. It begins :- Ay bi-farhang u 'ilm daryli'u l Laysa mdrd bi-juz tu hamtli'u. Man-am ti tu ki ld hayd land: Hazl-rri karda'im ihyzyci'u. Of European macaronic poems, the best known are, perhaps, the Macaronicorum poema of Merlinus Coccaius, published about A.D. 1529, and William Drummond of Hawthornden's Polcmo-Middinia, printed at Oxford in 1691. The followirig specimen from the latter may suffice :- "Hit adcranl Geordy Akz~zhedzus,el little Johnus, Et Jamy Richmus, et slout Michel Hendersorzus, Qui gillalis pulclzris ante alios dansare solebat, Et bobbare bene, et lassas kissare bortnas; Duncan Olyphanlus valde stalvertus, el ejzrs Filius eldestus jolyboyus, atque Oldmondus," Gc. There are many other terms used in describing the subject- matter of verses, such as Kufriyya't (blasphemous or heretical poems), Khamriyyrit (wine-poems), &c., which it is unnecessary to enumerate, since the number of these classes is not definite, and the terms employed commonly explain themselves. In addition to the terms above explained, there are a large number of rhetorical devices and quaint conceits employed by writers of ornate prose and verse which demand some notice from any one desirous of understanding the nature, or appreciating the ingenuity, of Persian (and Arabic or Turkish) literary compositions. Many of these figures, though no longer cultivated in this country, were highly esteemed by the Euphuists and other English writers of the sixteenth century, and a rich store of examples may be gleaned from George Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, published QJWAMI~S ORNA TE QAS~DA i 47 in 1589, and quoted hereinafter from Mr. Arber's reprint of 1869; while most varieties of the tajnls, or word-play, may be illustrated from the Ingoldsby Legends, the works of Tom Hood, and similar books. The more important of these artifices of the Persian rhetoricians and poets are illustrated in a qasida-i-muyannac, or "artifice-qasida," composed by the poet Qiwhmi of Ganja, the brother of the celebrated Nifihmi of Ganja, who flourished in the twelfth century of our era. This qaslda comprises IOI bayts, or verses, and is given on pp. 198-201 of vol. i of qiyh Pasha's Kharribdt. I reproduce it here, line by line, with prose translation, and running commentary as to the nature of the rhetorical figures which it is intended to illustrate. I. Ay falak-rd kawd-yi qadr-i-tu bdr, Way malak-rd lhand-yi- ~adr-i-tukdr 1 "0 thou the love of whose worth is the burden of heaven, And 0thou the praise of whose high place [affords] occupa- tion to the angels I" This verse exemplifies two figures, hurn-i-matlac, (" beauty of exordium "), which is, as Gladwin says, "when the poet exerts himself in the matla' " (or opening verse of a qarlda Husn-i-matla' and ~~~i,.or ghazal) "to fix the hearer's attention, and excite his curiosity for the catastrophe"; and tarsf', which literally means "setting with jewels," but in poetical composition is when the words in two successive mi!rrfcs, or half-verses, correspond, each to each, in measure and rhyme. An English example (but imperfect at two points) would be :- "0 love who liest on my breast so light, 0dove who fliest to thy nest at night 1" An excellent Latin example is given in Morgan's Macaronit Poetry (New York, 1872, P. 101) :- 48 RE TROSPECTlYE AND INTROD UCTOR Y llQuos arrgicis tristi diro cum vulnerc stravit, Hos sanguis Clzristi miro tum munerc lavit." 2. Tir-i-charklzat zi mihr dida sipar, Tir-i-charklzat zi milzr dida- sipdr 1 "The quarrel of thy cross-bow sees in the sun a shield; The [planet] Mercury in heaven lovingly follows thee with its eyes !" Here we have two figures, the tarsi' explained above, but combined with an elaborate series of "homonymies," or word- plays. Such word-plays (called tajnis or jinds) Tarsf~~~~JniS-are of seven kinds (or, if we include the kindred irhtiqdq, eight), all of which seven kinds are exemplified in this and the six following verses. In this verse the words on which the poet plays are identical alike in spelling, pointing, and pronunciation, and illustrate the first kind of tajnfr, called tdmm ("complete"). Thus tir is the name of the planet "Mercury," and also denotes "an arrow" or "quarrel" ; charkh means "heaven," and also "a cross-bow ";mihr, "the sun," and "love ";dlda, "having seen " or "saw," and "the eye ";sipar is a shield, while sipdr is the root of the verb sipurdan, "to entrust," dlda-sipdr being, at the end of the verse, a compound adjective meaning "en- trusting," i.~.,"fixing the eye." 3. Jlid-rd burda az m+dna miydn, Bukhl-rd ddda az kindra kiridr 1 '#Out of a company [of rivals] thou hast caught Generosity in thine embrace : Thou hast banished Avarice from thy side !" The tajnlr here illustrated is really the third variety, called zrf'id ("redundant "), though described in the margin of my text as of the last or "complete" kind, andTajnis-i-&id another instance of it occurs in the fifth verse. It is so called because one of each pair of words has a QIWAM~'~ORNATE QASIDA 49 "redundant " letter, which differentiates it from its fellow (maydn maylina; kindr, kindra), and prevents the word-play from being complete." An English exemplification from Puttenham's Arte of English Pocsie is the following :- "The maid that soon married is, soon marred in" q. Sd'id-i-mulk, u Raklrsh-i-Dawlat-rd, Tu siwdri, wa himmaf-r- tu sawdr. Tajnls-1-niqig. "On the arm of Empire, and the steed of State, Thou art the bracelet, and thy courage the rider." Rakhsh (here rendered by "steed ") was the name of the legendary hero Rustam's horse. The verse exemplifies the second kind of tajnis, called ndqif, or "defective," when the words on which the writer plays are spelt alike, but pointed differently, i.c,, differ in one or more of the short vowels. The following English example is from Puttenham's Artc of English Poesic :- "To pray for you ever I cannot refuse ; To prey upon you I should you much abuse.' 5. Past bd rifat-i-tu khdna-i-khdn: Tang bd fus!rat-i-tu shdrici- Shdr. ''Low compared with thine exaltation is the khan's Tajnis-I-did mansion :.... - Narrow compared with thy spaciousness is the street of the ShPr.'" Here again we have the "redundant "(zrf'id) variety of tajnir explained above in the third verse. I 6. BI wafd-yi lu mihr-i-jdn nd-chiz: Bd wafrt-yi tu Mihrijdn chu bahdr. r Shdr is the title of the ruler of Gharjiskin, a country near ~hirand Afghhnistin. 5 50 RETROSPECTJVE AND INTRODUCTORY "The love of the soul is naught without thy faithful troth : With thy faithful troth MihrijSnx is like Spring." Here we have the kind of tajnis called "com- ~ajnis-i-murak-pound "(murakkab), of which the late Mr. E. J. W. Gibb gives the following ingenious exemplification in English in the first volume (p. 118) of his History of Ottoman Poetry :- "Wandering far, they went astray, When fell on the hills the sun's last ray." 7. Sub!!-i-bad-kltwdlt z'ihfislrdtn-i-lu shdrtr ;Gfrl-i-bad-griyz'iflikhdr- i-iu khdr. "The morning of him who wishes thee ill [becomes as] evening through thy pomp ; The rose of him who speaks evil of thee [becomes as] a thorn through thy pride." Here the tajnis is what is called mukarrar, or Talnis-'-mu-karrar. repeated," shdm being a repetition of part of ihtishdm, and khdr of iftirhlrdr. Here is an example in English :- "Alas ! you did relate to us too laic, The perils compassing that agale gale." 8. 'Adlat dfdq shrrsta az dfdt; Tab'at dzdd btida az dzdr. "Thy justice hath cleansed the horizons from calamities; Thy nature hath been exempted from hurtfulness." Here the tajnis is of the kind called mutarraf ("partial " or "lateral "), the words dfaq and dfdt, and dzdd and Tajnis-l-mu-rfzdr agreeing save for a "partial " or "lateral " (i.c., terminal) difference. Example in Eng!ish :- a Mihrijin (or Mihragin),'I the month of Mithra," is the old Persian month corresponding roughly to our September. "Like Esau lose thy birthright: I instead Shall eat the pottage and shall break the bread." 9. Az tri bfmdr-i-@ulm-rri ddrd, Wa'a tu a'dd-yi mulk-rri fimdr. "By thee [is effected] the cure of him who is sick with injustice. By thee [is undertaken] the care of the enemies of the state." Here the tajnls is what is called khaiti r'linear" or Tajnis-1-khatti. "scriptory "), i.c;, the words bfjndr and tlmdr are the same in outline, and differ only in their diacritical points. 10. Juz glrnbdr-i-rtabard-i-lu nabarad Dida-i-'aql sunna-i-didrfr. "Save the dust of thy battle, the eye of understanding Will take naught as collyrium for its eyesight." This verse illustrates the isti'rira (" trope " or "simile "), the Isti'ha. expression "the eye of understanding " meaning "the understanding eye," or simply "the under- standing." ' xr. Dar gul-r-sharm ydfi bf gul-1-lu Shdtra-i-charkh mdh dyina- dhr.* * * * * * This verse (which is to me unintelligible, and probably corrupt) illustrates the figure called murd'dt-i-naglr ("the hluri'ict-1-nagir. observance of the similar"), or tanhub ("con- gruity "), and consists in introducing into a verse things which are naturally associated together, such as bow and arrow, night and day, sun and moon. The following English example is from Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (p. 25 I), from a "Partheniade" composed by him on Queen Elizabeth :- "Two lips wrought out of rubie rocke, Like leaves to shut and to unlock. As portall dore in Prince's chamber: A golden tongue in mouth of amb-cr." 52 RETXOSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTOR Y 12.An kunad krishislz-i-tu bd a'dd Ki.kurzad baklrsltislz-i-iu b& dindr. "Thy striving does to [thy] foes what thy giving wajjah. does to [thy] money!' This figure is called madh-1-muwajjah, or simply muwajyah, i.e., "implied praise ";for in the above verse the poet intends primarily to praise his patron's prowess on the field of battle ; but by the simile which he employs-"thou scatterest thy foes by thy valour a5 thou srattercst thy money by thy generosityn-- he also hints at another virtue. 13. Btl Izawetd-yi trc kufr bdslrad din: Bi-r.i+rl-yi tu fakhr bifslrad (fir. This verse illustrates the figure called "ambiguity," or muhtamalu'l-wajhayn ("that which will bear two bf~,~fy"~l-[opposite] interpretations "), for, the positions of subject and predicate being interchangeable in Persian, we may translate it either :- "With thy love, infidelity becomes faith : Without thine approval, pride becomes shame;' "With thy love, religion becomes infidelity: Without thine approval, shame becomes pride." Ambiguity or "amphibology " is treated by Puttenham (Arte of English Poesie, pp. 266-267) as a vice of style, which it is, unless it be deliberate, as it usually is with the Orientals, who thus outwardly praise one whom they really intend to censure. So in Morier's Hajji Baba the poet Asker ('Askar) is made to speak as follows :- (I I wrote a poem, which answered the double purpose of gratifying my revcnge for the ill-treatment I had received from the Lord High Treasurer, and of conciliating his good graces ; for it had a double meaning all through : what he in his ignorance mistook for praise, was, in fact, satire ;and as he thought that the high-sounding words in which it abounded (which, being mostly Arabic, he did not under- stand) must contain an eulogium, he did not in the least suspect that they were, in fact, exprcssions confaining the grossest disrespect. In truth, I had so cloaked my meaning that, without my explanation, it would have been difficult for any one to have discovered it." Rashidu'd-Din WatwPt relates, in his Gardens of Magic, that a certain wit among the Arabs said to a one-eyed tailor named 'Amr, "If you will make me a garment such that man shall be unable to say whether it is a qabri or a jubba, I will make for you a verse such that none shall be sure whether it is intended for praise or blame." The tailor fulfilled his part of the bargain, and received from the poet the following verse :- "'Amr made for me a coat : Would that his two eyes were alike I " This may be taken as meaning : Would that both his eyes were sound !" or "Would that both his eyes were blind I " An English example would be :- "All can appraise your service's extent : May you receive its full equivalent 1"' 14. Hasl rdy-at zamdna-rd 'ddil, Lik dast-at khixdna-rd ghadddrl T;;zzl;t,";F lrThy judgement deals justly with the Age, bihu'dhdhamm. Buf thy hand plays the traitor with the Treasury I" The figure exemplified in this verse is called "emphasis of praise by apparent censure " (ta'kfdu'l-madhi bi-mrf yurhbihu'dh- dhamm), or "pseudo-criticism," because the second clause, 'Similar in character are some of the palindromes, equivocal versa, and sertentines given by J. A. Morgan at pp. 50-57 of his excellent Macaronic Poetry. If the words (not the letters) in these palindromes be read back- wards, the sense is reversed, and praise turned to blame." 54 RETROSPECTIVE AND lNTRODUCTORY while appearing at first sight to be a qualification of the praise expressed in the first, in reality implies further praise, namely, in the instance given above, for generosity as well as justice. 15. Falak afzliir zi lu nu-ddrad kas: Ay Falak, nik Iltifit. gir u nik-ash ddr/ "Heaven hath none above thee : 0 Heaven l hold him well and keep him well I" This simple figure, called ikylit, or "turning from one person to another," needs no explanation. It may be from any person (first, second, or third) to any other, and examples of each kind will be found in Gladwin's Rhetoric . . . of the Persians, PP. 56-58. 16..Bak!tt sti-yi day-at khazdii dyad ; Rdst chtin bul- Ihirn. parast sti-yi Bahdr." "Fortune comes creeping to thy door, just as does the idolater to BahPr." This verse contains the ingenious figure called by Mr. Gibb (History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. i, pp. 113-114) "amphi- bological congruity," and depends on the employment in a verse of two or more ambiguous terms, which, from their juxtaposition, appear to be used in one sense, while they are really intended in the other. Thus, in the above verse, khazlin means "autumn" and also "creeping" (from the verb khazldan, "to creep" or "crawl"); while Bahdr means "spring," but is also the name of a place in Central Asia (whence the celebrated family of Barmak, or Barlnecides, came) where there existed a famous idol-temple. The reader, misled by the juxtaposition of these words, imagines at first sight that the former meaning of each is intended, while in reality it is the latter. In English, a good instance occurs in the following verse of "Look at the Clock," in the Ingoldsby Legends :- QIWAMPS ORNA TE QAS~DA'. 55 "Mr. David has since had a 'serious call,' And never drinks ale, wine, or spirits at all, And they say he is going to Exeter Hall To make a grand speech, And to preach and to teach People that 'they can't brew their malt liquor too smallD; That an ancient Welsh poet, one PYNDARAP TUDOR, Was right in proclaiming 'ARISTONMEN UDOR' 1 Which means 'The pure Element Is for Man's belly meant I' And that Gin's but a Snare of Old Nick the deluder I" The following verse, which I have constructed to illustrate this figure, is defective as regards spelling, but correct as to sound :- "0 mother, halt I' No fnrlher let us roam ; The sun has set, and we are far from home!' The next eight couplets, which I take together, illustrate eight different kinds of tashblh, or simile, termed respectively mutlaq (" absolute "), tafdil ("comparative," or Tashbih (eight "preferential "), ta'kld (" emphatic "), mashrirtvarieties). (" conditional "), idmhr ("implicit "), taswiya ("equivalent "), kinliya ("metaphorical "), and 'aks ("anti- thetical "), most of which are sufficiently explained by their names, taken in conjunction with the following exemplifi- cations :- r. -rnutIaq. 17.Tigh-i-tu hamchu dftdb bi-ndr sir' ddrad zamdna- rd zi nipdr. a. -tafr)ii. 18. Charkh umrflzi; nu, nisti k,az dttk Nisl in har du-rd qiwdm u qardr/ 3. 19. Balki at lust cltarkh-rd lamkin, Balki as lust mdh- rd ighdr I 4. -mashnit. 20. Mdlti, ar mdlt ndwarad kdhislz; Charkhi, ar charkh nu-shkanad zinhrir / 5. -iQm5r. 21.Gar tu ,clrarkhi, 'add chirdst irigtin ? Wa'r lu mdhi, 'adti chirdsl rtizdr? 6. -taswlya. 22. Jdy-i kha~in-alchu jdy-i-lust rafi'; An-i-td takhl, ma dn-i-klza~malddr. 7. -kinhya. 23. CItJn tu dar rtiz slzab kuiai paydd, Chlin lu az khbr gz11kuni didkr, 56 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTOR Y b. -'ah 24. Shdm gardad chu ~ubhsurkh-libds, Subh gardad cltu shdm tira-shi'dr. "Thy sword, like the sun with its light, keep the world replete with pictures. Thou art heaven and moon ;nay, thou art not, for these two have not [thy] subsistence and endurance I Nay, rather from thee heaven derives its dignity ;Nay, rather from thee the moon derives its manifestation I Thou art the moon, were it not that the moon wanes ; thou art heaven, did not heaven break its troth ! If thou art heaven, why is thine enemy inverted?' And if thou art the moon, why is thine enemy on the wane ? Thine enemy's position is high, like thine ; for thine is the throne, while his is the gibbet I When thou displayest the night in the day,' [And] when thou revealest the rose from the thorn? Evening becomes clad in scarlet like morning, [And] morning becomes apparelled in black like evening." The next figure illustrated is that called siyrfqatu'l-a'drfd ("the proposition of multiples "), where a com- -mon quality or action is ascribed to a number of otherwise dissimilar things :- 25. Dust burda'sl, gdlz-i-'ard-i-hunar, Bi-saklrlt, d wafd wa 'adl u yasdr, "What time talents are displayed, In generosity, constancy, justice, and opulence," 26. Nzir-at az mihr, ludf-at az ridhid; Birr-at az abr, Tanslqu'pfpifit. jdd-at as 'kuhsdr. For thasky is compared to an "inverted bowl,"and the same word, snr-nigfin,literally "head-downwards," as applied to a foe, means "over-- thrown." I.e., when the dust stirred up by the hoofs of thy charger hides the sun so that day becomes like night. 3 The rose here means the blood of the foe, and the thorn the sword of the poet's patron. "Thy light excels the Sun, thy grace Venus; Thy benevolence the cloud, thy generosity the highlands." This figure is named tansiqu'f-!$it, or "the arrangement of attributes," and is when, to quote Gladwin (pp. 46-47), the poet ''uses contrary properties, as they occur, without order or regularity." The next three verses illustrate the figure known as "pleonasm," or hashw (lit. "stuffing "), LC.,the introduction of a word or words superfluous to the sense, Hashw. which may be either a downright blemish (when it is called hashw-i-qabih, or "cacopleonasm "), or an im- provement ((lashw-i-maNh, or "eupleonasm "), or neither hurtful nor beneficial (hashw-i-mutawassit, "mediocre " or "indifferent pleonasm "). I find the following example of ucacopleonasm" at p. 264 of Puttenham's Artc of Englirh Paesie :- "For ever may my true love live and neve? die, And that mine eyes may see her crownde a Queene," where the words in italics are quite superfluous to the meaning, and do not in any way beautify the form. The pleonasm is italicised in the translation of each of the following verses :- --qabib. 27. Qahr-all ar mujtahid shawad, bi-barad ~smdn-rd bi-suklzra u bigdr; -mutawassit. 28. LIk lug-i-tu, ay humLyzin rdy, Bi-lutaj dut bar dwarad ti biblit. -malip. 29. Bdgh-i-'umr-af (ki fdza bdd muddm Chashm-i-bad ddr /) rawda'ist bi-bdr. "Thy power, should it be exerted, would compel Heaven to forced toil and labour for thee; But thy grace, 0 thou of royal mind I Would by its favours bring forth pearls from the seas. The "generosity" of the highlands consists in the abundance of thet streams 58 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTORY The garden of thy life (may it be evet fresh I May the evil eye be remote from it I) is a garden in fruit." The next verse illustrates the figure which is generally called ishtiqLq ("etymology "), but more correctly, shibhu'l- ishtiqdq ("pseudo-etymology "). It is in realityIshtlqbq. a variety of tajnh, or word-play, where the words upon which the poet plays appear to come from one root, but have really no common derivation. Of this figure of Proso- nomasia, George Puttenham says, in his Arte of English Poesie (p. 212) :- "Ye have a figure by which ye play with a couple of words or names much resembling, and because the one seemes to answere the other by manner of illusion, and doth, as it were, nick him, I call him the Nicknamer. . ..Now when such resemblance happens betweene words of another nature, and not upon men's names, yet doeth the Poet or maker finde prety sport to play with them in his verse, specially the Comical1 Poet and the Epigrammatist. Sir Philip Sidney in a dittie plaide very pretily with these two words, love and live, thus :- #And all my life I will confesse, The lesse I love, I live the lesse.'. Two other examples from the same passage are as follows :- '(They be lubbers not lovers that so use.to say," and- "Prove me, madame, ere ye fall to reprove, Meeke mindes should rather excuse than accuse!" 30. RB-i-kishislz, chu eir-i-rd~z dd An qadar-paykar-i-qadd- jayf?dr,-- In the day of battle, when thou bestridest that [war-horse] :ike Fate in form, and like Destiny in determination,"- Here paykar, "form," and paygdr, "determination," or "strife," appear to be, but are not, derived from the same root. In this verse however, the etymology (ishtiqn'q)is real. ~IlVdh4f.SORNATE QAJ~DA 59 The next three verses illustrate three varieties of say, "response," or "harmonious cadence " (literally, "the cooing Saj'. of doves "), called respectively mutawdzi, mutarraf, and mutawrfzin. In the first, the words involved in the figure agree in measure and rhyme ;in the second, in rhyme only ;and in the third, in measure only, as follows :- -mutawizi. 31. Dar sujdd-at nawdn shawand zi Pfsh, Bar wujdd- at rawdn kunand nithdr, -muta&in. 32. Sar-kashdn -i-jahdn -i-bdditha -war, Akhtardn-i- sipihr-i-dyirta-ddr. -mutamf. 33. Arad-at falh dar maka'n imkrfn :Dihad-at ktih bar firdr qardr. "Trembling there advance to do the homage, Before thee cast their souls as an offering, The proud ones of this fateful world, The stars of the mirror- holding sphere. Victory brings thee power in space ; The mountain [i.e., thy steadfastness] gives thee endurance against flight." The next four verses exemplify four varieties of anagram (rnaqlirb), viz., the "complete " (-i-lull), where one word in the verse is a complete anagram of another (e.g., Maqllib. karam and marg in the Arabic character) ;the "partial " (-i-bacd, where the second word consists of the same letters as the first, but reversed otherwise than consecu- tively (e.g., rashk and shukr) ;the "winged " (mujannah), where, in the same verse or half verse, words occur at the beginning and end which are "complete "anagrams of one another ;and the "even" (mustawi), where the sentence or verse may be read backwards or forwards in the same way. This, properly called the Palindrome, is the most difficult and the most perfect form.= Many ingenious examples are given of anagrams (pp. 25-44) and palindromes (pp. 45-50) in Morgan's Macarotric Verse. One of the most ingenious of the former is an "Anagramma Quintuplex-Ds Fide," in Latin :- "Recta fides, cerfa est, arcef mala schismata, non est, Sicut Creta, fides fictilis, arte caret." Go RE TROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTOR Y 34. RAs~~-i-qad~*-a/barad sipihr 14 rfrlj~iin; SHUKR-i- -ha%$. fa&-at kunad bildd u diydr. -kull. 35. Ga~arddrad zi fib-i-dilpaygdn; MARGbdrad bi- khafm bar stifdr. -mujamah. 36. G~N1-i-rzusraldihad guzdrish-i-JANG; RAY-i-dawlal zanad himdyat-i-Y~R. 37. RA~~IsH-I-MARDGANJ- BAR^ U Q~T;TU QAW~-RA-mustawi BI-IANG DAR MA-SHUM~R. "The sky and the stars envy thy worth ;the countries and lands render thanks for thy victory. He warms the spear-head with the glow of hearts; the nock [of his arrow] rains death on his foe. [His] exploits of war yield a treasure of victory; [his] pro- tection of friends devises empire. The pleasure and substance of a man [is] to lavish treasure ; do thou reck nothing of the strong in war." The next eight verses illustrate eight different varieties of what is called raddu'l-'ajuz 'ala9;-jadr(literally "the throwing back of the last word in the verse to the first Raddu''-'ajur'ala'g-?adr. place in the verse "), a figurd less limited than its name would imply, since it consists, as Gladwin (p. 11) says, in using the same word in any two parts of the verse. This figure resembles those called by Puttenham (Arte Of English Poesie, p. 21o) Epanalepsts (" Echo sound," or "slow return "), Epizeuxis (" Underlay," or "Cuckoo-spell "), . and Plochc (" the doubler.") Another :- I' PerspicuB brevitate nihil magis afficit aures ; In verbis, ubi res postulat, esto brevis!' Of true Palindr.ornes are :-Ni+ov dvopljpara pd pQvav d#tv ;"Ablata, afalba" (of a lady excluded from the Court by Queen Elizabeth) ; "Able was I ere I saw Elba " (of Napoleon I) ;and Taylor's 'I Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel." 1 Somewhat similar, again, is the 'lconcatenation," or lichain-verse," described and illustrated on pp. 91, 92of Morgan's Macarortic Poetry; eg., the following :- "Nerve thy soul with doctrines noble, Noble in the walks of time, Time that leads to an eternal, An eternal life sublime," kc. QIWA&II~S ORNATE QAS~DA 6I 38. ~L~-i-'adl-i-lumulk ddshlan-ast : 'Adl-rd khud jux in nu. bdshad d~. 39. Bi-Y~stiR-i-tujdd khurd YAM~N: Shud YAM~N-i-zamdnabar lu YASAR. 40. Khasm ~i~AR-i-dawlat-i-tukashad: Khafm nikd-tar-ast dar T~M~R. 41. Dar maqdnti ki BAR-i-zarbakhshi, Rizish-i-abr-rd nabbhad BAR, 42. Mi-guzdd bi-~u~ywA~-i-'add: Kas na-didast RUM^ wh guzdr. 43. Charkh az ~AR-i-tuNAY~ARAD: Bandagdn-rd kujd kuni bd~? 44. N'~RADaz khidmaf-i-iu bidn sat, Wat chi bishgdfiyash bi- niza thti MAR. 45. Dushnzandn-rd bi-~Aw~~iwa khildi Bd la&d-yi gunbud-r- DAWW~R. 46. Qahr u kin-al bi-bdd ddda chu khak, Lutf u qahr-at bi-db kushta chu ndr. "The task of thy justice is to hold the kingdom : Justice, indeed, has no task but this. Bounty swears by thy wealth ;the right hand of Fate became to thee a left hand.' The foeman is filled with anxiety by reason of thy prosperity; it is best that the foeman should be under care.' On the occasion of thy distributing stores of gold, the pouring of the cloud hath no place.= Thou payest with thy spear the foeman's debt : no one has [hitherto] regarded the spear as a payer of debts. Fortune is not hurt by thy hurting: How should'st thou hurt thy servants ? It will not withdraw its head from thy service, though thou should'st break it like a snake with thy lance. Thine enemies by antagonism and opposition, at the instiga- tion of the circling vault [of Heaven], Thy wrath and ire cast to the winds like dust, Thy clemency and wrath extinguish like water extinguishes fire." 4 Here we have also a good instance of ihdm ("amphibology," or "ambiguity "), for yasdr means both "wealth " and "the left hand," while ~amlnmeans both an "oath" and "the right hand." Timdr signifies "care" in both senses, i.c., anxiety and custody. I I.e., no access," or, in vulgar English, 'I is not in it" 4 I.e., "thy clemency extinguishes thy wrath like fire extinguishes water." This figure resembles that called by Puttenham (p. 219)"Anfi. theton, or the renconter." 62 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTORY The last couplet, as well as the next, illustrates the figure called mutadddd, or "antithesis," and generally consists in bringing together in one verse things antithetical Mutadidd. or opposite, such as the four elements (as in the iast of the verses cited above, and in another on p. 37 supra), or light and darkness, or day and night, and the like. The next two couplets exemplify what is called i'nit, which means that the poet "takes unnecessary trouble " either by extending beyond what is required the rhyme of I'llit. the rhyming words, or by undertaking to use a given word or words in each verse. The following English examples from the Ingoldsby Legends will serve as illustrations of the former variety :- ''A slight deviation's forgiven ! but then this is Too long, I fear, for a decent parenthesis. .." Another example :- "And a tenderer leveret Robin had never ute; So, in after times, oft he was wont to asseverate." Another :- "And the boldest of mortals a danger like that must fear, Rashly protruding beyond our own atmosphere." 47. Ay nikli-khwdh-i-dawlat-i-iu'aziz, Wa'y bad-andish-i-ruzgdr- i-fu khwdrl 48. Har-ki zinhdr-khwdr-i-'ahd-i-tuskud, Bi-sipdr-ash bi-'dlam-i- klzhn-khwdr. ''0 thou the well-wisher of whose empire is ennobled, and 0 thou whose fortune's envier is abased, Whosoever is false to thy covenant, do thou consign him to the blood-drinking world I" This figure is also called Luziltnu md la yalznrn, or "the making obligatory on one's self that which is not obligatory." In the second of its two senses (that illustrated in the Persian I.e., to a violent death. verses given above) it only becomes difficult when continued throughout a long qajfda. The next verse illustrates the figure called muzdawaj, or "the paired," which consists in the introduction Yuzdawaj. into the verse of rhyming words other than the - necessary rhyme :- 49. ~dh-~-R~ZAbi-N~ZAbi-r'bli'l: Chin kuni 'UM-i-RAZM,in't sawdr/ "Thou snatchest fine chaff with thy spear; when thou seekest battle, see what a horseman I" The next figure, mutalawwin ("variegated," or "chame- leon ") consists in so constructing a verse that it may be read in either of two metres. Thus the followingMutalawwin. verse may be scanned, like the rest of the poem, in the metre called Khaf v-i-makhbicn-i-maqp5r (---- v-w-II -u-), or in that named sari'-i-ma@ (-w--I--W-I---I 1. 50. Ay brida qidwa-i-wadi' u shadft Way shuda qibla-i-sighdru kibdr / "0thou who art the model of low and high :and 0thou who art the shrine of small and great I" The next figure is what is called rrsdlu'l-mathal, a term rendered by the late Mr. E. J. W. Gibb "proverbial com- mission ";of which there is a subordinate variety, IdIu'l-mathal. irsa'lu'l-mathalayn, which consists in the intro- duction into the verse of two proverbial sayings, or of two similitudes. This is similar to the "Gnome, or director" of Puttenham (p. 243), and the "Parimia, or Proverb" (p. ~gg), concerning the latter of which he says :- "We dissembleafter a sort, when we speakeby common proverbs, or, as we use to call them, old said sawes, as thus :- 'As the olde cocke crowes so doeth the chick : A bad cooke that cannot his own $ngm lick.' 64 RE I'ROSPECTI VE AND INTROD UCTOX Y Meaning by the first, that the young learne by the olde to be good or evil1 in their behaviours: by the second, that he is not to be counted a wise man, who, being in authority, and having the administration of many good and great things, will not serve his owne turne and his friends whilest he may, and many such pro- verbiall speeches : as totnesse is turned Frenclz, for a strange altera- tion : Skarborow wariring, for a sudaine commande~nent,allowing no respect or delay to bethinke a man of his busines. Note never- thelesse a cliversitie, for the two last examples be proverbs, the two first proverbial1 speeclies!' This love of introducing proverbs into their verses is very characteristic of several Persian poets, notably Sa'ib of I~fahd~l (d. A.D. 1677-78), who served as a model to a host of Turkish verse-writers ; and, in much earlier times, Abu'l-Fad1 as- Sukkari, of Merv, who, as ath-Tha'hlibi informs us in his Yat/matu'd-Dahr (Damascus edition, vol. iv, pp. 23 and 25), written in A.D. 994, "was very fond of translating Persian proverbs into Arabic." 51. Nu-kuslzad db-i-klzasm dtaslz-i-tu; Naslzki?tad tdb-i-ndrmr~hra- i-ntdr / "The water of the enemy extinguishes not thy fire ;the snake- stonex cannot outshine the light I " 52. Gar malti, fdrigh az hawd-yi kltuszi,f: Gar mayi, imait az bald- yi-khuindr I If thou art a moon, [then it is one] free from anxiety of eclipse : If thou art wine [it is wine] exempt from the plague of wine-headache I" Lughaz. The next ten verses form a lughaz, or riddle :- 53. Chfst dir dhr, wa a$-i-d nazdik? Chid an fard, wn fill-i-ri bisydr ? 54. Klrdm-i-J har-chi 'ilm-rd pukhta: Mast-i-d har-chi 'aql-rd-. h~~slzydr. 55. Dil-shikan, Efk dard-idil-paywand: Klaush-guzar, lfk rdzgdr- It is popularly believed in the East of the snake, as in the West of the toad, that it carries in its head a jewel, generally an emerald. 56. Raizj-i-ti rzazd-i-bi-dildn rdhat: Kltwdr-i-~i nazd-i-zirakan dushwdr. 57. Chiirt du'd khush-'iitdn u bi-nrarkab: Chdn qadd ralt-naward u bi-hanjdr. 58. Andult-ash hamchu lahw u rdhat-bakhsh: Atash-ash hamchu db rrtislz-glrwdr. 59. Na'ra dar way shikaizj-i-mdsiqf: Ndla dat way nawd-yi mtisiqdr. 60.'Zshq a~lfstkaz mundza'at-ash 'Aql ghaingin buwad, rawdn ghamklrwdr. 61. Khdga 'islaq-i-bufiki dar ghazal-ash Midhat-i-Shdh mi-kunam takrdr. 62. Shdyad ar-zdn glzazdla bi-it'ytiskad Zin nawd in gltazal bi- naghma-i-zdr, "What is that distant one, whose origin is withal near? What is that unique one, whose deeds are withal many ? Whose rawest [recruit] ripens whatever is knowledge :whose most drunken [dependent] gives sense to whatever is understanding. A breaker of hearts, but a healer of hearts' ills :living pleasantly, but compelling fortune : Whose paih is peace to those who have lost their hearts ;whose easiest is hard to the intelligent. Like prayer, light-reined and horseless :like Fate, a swift and unaccountable traveller. Care for him is like play and a giver of ease ;whose fire is like water, sweet to drink. A cry in whom is a movement of music ;a wail in whom is the melody of the shepherd's pipe. Love is that element by whose struggles reason is rendered sorrowful and the spirit sad ; In particular the love of that idol in my love-songs to whom I repeat the praises of the king. Therefore it were meet if the sun should listen graciously to the ode in this song set in plaintive strain." These riddles are generally very obscure, and I regret to say that of the one here given I do not know the answer. Other specimens, with the so!utions, will be found on pp. 336-338 of Riickert's work on Persian Poetry and Rhetoric. 6 66 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTOR Y Next comes what is called a "double-rhymed maflac," i.c., a hIatlac.l-Dhd fresh opening-verse with an internal double rhyme, qifiyatayn. or rhyme between the two half-verses :- 63.Az dil-am sbsan-ash bi-burd qardr: bi-saram nargis-ash supurd khumdr. "Her lily [breast] hath snatched repose from my heart: her narcissus [eye] hath imposed intoxication on my head." Then follows the favourite figure, called "the feigned ignorance of one who knows," which is akin to Tajdhulu'l- ,,, what Puttenham (p. 234) calls Aporia, or "the Doubtful ":- 64. n7ayhak! An nargis-ast, yd jddzi? Yd Rabb, dn szisart-ast,yd gulrzdr? "Alas I is that [eye] a narcissus, or a witch ? 0 Lord I ISthat [breast] a lily or a pomegranate I" The next figure is the simple one called Su'Al u jawab. "Question and Answer " (su'dl u jawdb) :- 65. Guffam :'Az jdn bi-'ishq bf-zdra~rz/ ' Gitft : a 'Ashiq zi jdn buwad bfzdr I' ''I said :'Through love I am sick of life I' She said : 'Sick of lie must the lover needs be I"' The next verse is a muwashrha!~, or acrostic, of which also, I regret to say, I have not been able to discover Muwashshah. the solution. 66. Dtist tni-ddram-ash hi ydr-i-~rran-ast: Dushman dn bilz ki khud nu-bdskad ydr / '' I love her, for she is my friend : it is, indeed, well that a friend should not be a foe !" The mulatnma', or "pied verse," illustrated in the next , . line, has been already mentioned on p. 23 rupra. . . Muamma: Examples in English and Latin are frequent in the Ingoldsby Legendr, r.g. :- "...I've always-considered Sir Christopher Wren, As an architect, one of the greatest of men ; And, talking of Epitaphs,-much I admire his, 'Circumspice, si monumentum requiris!" And again (though this, perhaps, rather comes under the figure tarjuma, or "translation ") :- "'Nos ego oeniculos feci, tulit alter horzores' : I wrote the lines-* * owned them-he told stories 1" 67. Scikht day dtash-am :chi mi-griyam? Ahraqat-rzi 'Lhazeld bz- ghayri'tt-tzdr / She hat11 burned me in fire : What do I say ? Sine igne amor me cotnbtiril I " The next five verses illustrate figures which depend upon the peculiarities of the Arabic letters, in respect to their being joined or unjoined, dotted or undotted respectively ; and which cannot, therefore, be represented in English characters. In the first, termed "disjointed " (muqa.t?a'), all the letters are unjoined; in the second (muwa~jal,all are joined ;the third (tnujarrad) is not mentioned in the books at my disposal, and I do not see wherein its peculiarity consists ;in the fourth (raqtd) the letters are alternately dotted and undotted ;while in the fifth (khayfd) the words consist alternately of dotted and undotted letters. $ Muqafta'. 68. Zdr u zard-am zi dard-i-diiriy-i-zi: Dard-i-di2-ddt zard ddrad u zdr. 69.Tan-i-'aysh-am rta!zifgasht bi-gham :gul-i-bakht-amMuwagsat nihufta gasht bi-klrdr. hlujarrad. 70. Chihra-i-rawshan-ash,ki rtiz-i-111an-ast,Zir-i-zulf-ash mahist day shab-i-fdr. 71. Ghanzza-i-shlikh-i-dn $anam bu-t'shdd ashk-i-hhtin- Raqta am zi chashm-i-khlifz-dthdr. Khayfi. 72. Dil shud, u ham nu-binad az way mihr: sar shud, u ham nu-pichad az,tan hdr. "I am weak and pale through grieving at her farness [from me] : grief for one's sweetheart keeps [one] pale and weak. 68 RETROSPECTlVE AND INTROD UCTOR Y The frame of my life grew weak in sorrow :the flower of my fortune became hidden by thorns. Her bright face, which is my day, beneath her locks is a moon in a dark night. The wanton glances of that idol have loosed blood-stained tears from my blood-shot eyes. My heart is gone, and it does not even see kindness from her : my head is gone, and it does not even turn aside the trouble from the body." The next line contains an enigma (mu'ammri), which again Mubarnmi. I have not been able to solve :- 73. Mazj i~ dlid-i-dil u du dida-r-man brird daryd wa abr-rd nriqddr. "The waves (of tears) and heart-smoke (i.e.,sighs) of my two eyes have lowered the esteem of the sea and the cloud." The next figure illustrated is the tadmin, or "insertion" (i.e., of the verse of another poet in one's own), already men- tioned at p. 45 jupra. It is necessary, however, TaQmin. either that the "inserted " verse should be very well known, or that it should definitely be introduced as a quotation, lest the poet employing it expose himself to a charge of plagiarism. A good instance in English is the following from the Ingoldsby Legends:- "'One totich to his Izand, and one word to I~isear,'- (That's a line which I've stolen from Sir Walter, I fear)." The following ta,&nln is one or the few Persian verses which the author of this work has ventured to compose, and was written at the request of a friend who was enamoured of a young lady named May, which word (pronounced in exactly the same way) means "wine" in Persian. Shaykh Sacdi, of Shirhz, says in one of his verses in the Gulistcin :- Mast-i-may blddr gardad ~ziln-i-slzab: hfast-i-sdpi riz-i-nta!rshar bdnzddd, which means- QIWAMPS ORNATE QA$IDA .69 "He who is intoxicated with the Wine (May) will come to his senses at midnight : He who is intoxicated with the cup-bearer [only] on the Resur- rection morlling I " From these verses I made the following ta&rnln, which also contains a tajnls-i-tdmm, or "perfect word-play," on the word (6 may," and an ighrdg, or "exaggeration "of the most approved type :- 'Yast-i-may bfddr gardad nfm-i-slrab,' farmrid Shaykh: In, agarchi qawl-i-Slzaykh-asl, nist jd-yi i'timdd : dIarz mayi ddna~n,ki hargalz mast-i-dn gardad kasi, Sar zi masti bar nu-ddrad 'rriz-i-ma!zshar bdmddd.' "' He who is intoxicated with the Wine will come to his senses at midnight,' says the Shaykh :I This, though it is the Shaykh's saying, is not a statement on which one can rely. I know a certain Wine (or a certain May) wherewith should one become intoxicated He will not raise up his head from his intoxication even 'on the Resurrection-morning.' " 74. Wajl klzwdham: nu-dcinam drzki bi-kas rdyagdn rukh nanti- nutndyad ydr? "I desire union : [but] do I not know this, that the Beloved will not show her face to any one for nothing?" The deplorable fact that I do not know which part of the verse is the quotation, nor whence it is borrowed, rather lays me open to the charge of ignorance than the poet to that of plagiarism. The figure termed igl~rriq("straining ") is next illustrated. This is one of the three recognised forms of ~ghticq. hyperbole (muba'lagha), viz., tabligh, when the assertion made "is possible both to reason and experience "; ighrcfq, "when it is possible, but not probable "; Ohuluww. and ghuluww, "when the assertion is absolutely impossible." A good instance of this last is given by Dawlat- ' Sa'di is always spoken of by the Persians as "the Shaykh" pay excellence. 70 REZ'ROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UC3'0RY shah (p. 33 of my edition) in the two following verses in praise of Sultin Mahmlid of Ghazna by the poet Ghadb'iri (or 'Adi'iri), of Ray1 :- Sawdb hard ki fiaydd ~tn-knrdhar du jahdn Yagdtra izad-i-ddda~i-bi-rza&iru hamdl : Wa gar-rra hay du bi-btzkltslt~ditS bi-niz-i-sakhd ; Ufnid-i-bartda nu-nrdtzdf bi-lzad-i-~ttrrla'dl1 "Well it was that God, the One, the Judge, Exempt from peer or mate, Made apparent one alone of those two worlds He did create ; Else the King's unstinted bounty would have given bolh away; Nothing then would have been left for which a man to God should pray I " Another still more extravagant instance of ghuluww (in the theological as well as in the rhetorical sense) is the following verse addressed to Bahi'u'llih, the late Pontiff of the Bibis, by Nabil of Zarand :- liliItalq gliyalrd Khudli'i, wa man andar gltadab dyam; Parda bar ddsltta ma-P'sartd bi-klzud narg-i-Khudri'f! "Men call Thee God, and I am filled with wrath thereat : Withdraw the veil, and suffer no longer the shame of Godhead [to rest upon Thee] 1"' The instance of tghra'q given in our qalida is the follow- ing :- 75. War nulndyad zi bas safd kc dar~tsl,Rdz-i-man dar rukhash buwad dlddr. "Or if she shows it [i.~.,her cheek], such is its translucency that my secret will be apparent in her face:' a Dawlatshih adds that Sultan Mahmfid was so pleased with this extravagant verse that he gave the poet seven purses of gold, containing a sum equivalent to 14,000dirhams. See my translation of the New History, p. 395. I have heard it said that this verse was really addressed originally to the Imiin Husayn by some enthusiasticShi'ite. QIWAMPSORNATE QAS~DA: The next seven verses illustrate different combinations of the figures called jam' (combination), tafriq (separa- Jam',,taqsim.u tafriq tion), and taqsim (discrimination), of which the nature will be sufficiently clear from the follow- ing lines:- ,am,. 76. Bar lab-ash zulf 'dslziq-ast chu man: Id jaram hamchu man 'sh nbt qardr. Tafriq. 77. Bhd-i-~libh-astbti-yi eulf-ash:nay, nu-buwad bdd-i- pb!z 'anbar-bdr! Jam' u taqaim. 78. Man u zulfilz-i-ti nighnsdr-im, Iik ti bar gul-ast u man bar khdr. Jam' u tafriq. 79. Has! khan-ash firdz-i-'dlam-i-td:dn yaki abr, u in yak! gulz~fr. Taqsim u tafriq. 80. ~hamm-i-duchi2 marti du chiz supurd :dida-rd db, u stna-rd zartdr." tafliq 81. Hamchu chashm-am tawdngar-asl lab-ash:drr taqsim. bi-aslzk, in bi-lu'lu'i-shah~ldr. 82. Ab-i-dn tira, db-i-krawshan ;cfn-Gingiva,w'rfn-i-u guficir. 1 I ''Her tresses: like me, are in love with her lips, consequently, like me, they know no rest. The fragrance of her tresses is [like] the morning breeze ;nay, for the morning breeze is not laden with ambergris I I and her tresses are cast down headlong, but they on the roses * and I on the th~rns.~ The down overshadows the world of her face : that is the cloud, and this the rose-garden. Sorrow for two things conferred on me two things :tears on my eyes and verjuice on my bosom. Her lip is as rich as my eye, the latter in tears, the former in royal pearls.3 The water of those [tears] is dark, while the water of these [pearls] is bright ;the property of those [my eyes] is weep- ing, and of these [her lips] speech." * I.e., her cheeks. 'I.C.,affliction. 'lPearls" here evidently means pearls of speech, but the teeth are often metaphorically so called. 72 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTOR Y The next four verses illustrate the figure called tafslr ("explanation"), of which there are two kinds, Tafsir-I-khafiand ~~f~i~-i-jali.called respectively jalf (" patent ") and khaf f ("latent "), which last is complicated by a kind of chiasmus. The following exemplifies the latter :- 83. IJigar, d gidrr, u 3chaslrm, u 4cltihr-i-man-asl, dargham-i-'ishq- i-dn but-i-Farkh&r, 84. Ham bi-glianr4khasla, karn zi-fana nraJ$~ir,ham bi-kktin3gharqa, ham zi zakhmr ajg~ir. "My'heart, and 'soul, and leye, and Yace are, in love-longing for that fair one of Farkhir, Sick4 with grief, parted' from tlie body, submcrgcd3 in blood, weakened' by wounds. The other kind 01 tafsfr is exemplified in the next two verses :- 85. Kltt~rd,lu khurdam* bi-'isltq-i-dn nd-kdm ;hast,s u hastam4 zr hajr-i-ii 9th-chdr; 86. u mar&klzzitt,' u man ward andrih'; zi zi man skhd,3 u man zi zi gham-kRwir.4 "She consumes,' and I consumea in her love in spite of myself ; she is? and I am,' willing or no, through her separation; She my blood,' and I her griefa; she glad3 through me, and I sorrowful4 through her." The next two verses give an instance of what is called kaldm-i-jdmi', which "is when the poet treats on Kalirm-I-jimi'. morality, philosophy, or worldly delights" :- 87. Ma-yam az gliam sapid gasht GIZUslzir :dil zi nri(zrra1 siydlr gasht chd qdr, 88. in zi 'aks-i-bald kaslzid kkidhb, Wlitzzi rhlt-ijajh girifl glzubdr. "Through grief, my hair hat11 turned white as milk; through sorrow my heart hath become black as pitch ; This derived its tint from the reflection of [dark] affliction, while that was powdered with the dust of sorrow's path." &sn-r-maRhZa!, or "apt transition," the figure next illus- trated, means that in the guriz-gdh, or "transition-verse" (see pp. 30 and 32, n. I), the poet passes gracefully and Fun-i-makhlag. skilfully from the exordium of his qasida to the paid or purpose (panegyric or otherwise) which he has in view :- 89. Gham-i-dil gar bi-bast b&dr-am, madh-i-shah mi-kushdyad-am bdzdr. "If the heart's sorrow hat11 closed my market, the praise of the King re-opens it: The next figure illustrated is tazalzuI or mutazalzil, which means "shaking " or "shaken " to the foundations, as by an earthquake (zalzala), and is, as Gladwin saysTazalzul. (P.32), "when there is a word of which, upon changing the vowel-point of one letter only, the sense is altered entirely ":- I go. Shah QiziE Anldn, ki dust u dil-ash hasi khasm-shumdr u I I khaim-i;slzurndr. "King Qizil Arslsn,' whose hand and heart are [respectively] an accounter for enemies and an enemy to accounts."* 1bdhC,the figure next displayed, means in Rhetoric "re- originating," "reconstructing," or "re-creating," that is, expressing in similar but different form the lbdil. thought of some previous poet or writer, while giving it a new meaning or application ; which procedure, though bordering on sirqat, or "plagiarism," is not (like other plagiarisms of form or meaning, viz., intikhrfl, maskh, and saIkh : see Riickert, pp. 188-191) reckoned a fault, but a merit. To judge of the comparative value of a verse inspired by another as regards either form or meaning, it is necessary to be a=- ' Qizil Arslin 'Uthmin, one of the Atibegs of ~dharba~jsn,reigned from A.D. 1185-91. a This means that while his hand accounted for his foes in battle, his generous heart knew no reckoning in the distribution of its bounty. 74 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTORY quainted with the original, which, unfortunately, I am not in the following instance :- 91. flazm-ash dwurda bdd-rd bi-suktin: 'azm-ash afganda khdk-rd bi-rnaddr, "His resolve brings the wind to a standstill: his determination casts the dust into a whirl." The next verse illustrates the simple figure called tacajjub, ~~c~jj~b.'(astonishment " :- 92. Jd-yi drir gar maydria-i-darydst, az chi ma'nist dust-i-d dur- bdr ? "If the place for pearls is in the midst of the sea, for what reason does his hand rain pearls ? " The answer to this question contained in the next verse affords an instance of lzusn-i-ta'lil, or "poeticalHusn-I-ta'lU. ;etiology," which consists in explaining a real fact by a fanciful or poetical cause :- 93. Raglzm-i-daryd, ki bukhl mi-warzad, u kurrad mdl bar jahdtr Ilhdr. "To spite the sea, which practises avarice, he scatters wealth on the world." Here the king's liberality is ascribed to disgust at the stingi- ness of the ocean, though this typifies liberality, so that daryd- dart ("ocean-handed ") is used as a synonym for bountiful. The following verse, however, strikes me as a much prettier instance of the figure in question :- Husn-Gmah-rd bd lu sarzjidam bi-ntizdn-i-qiyds: Pnlla-i-mah bar falak slzud, u tu mdrzdi bar zamin. "I weighed the beauty of the moon with thine in the balance of judgment : The pan containing the moon flew up to heaven, whilst thou wert left 011 the earth." QIWAMPS ORNATE QAS~DA 75 George Puttenham's definition and examples of aetiology (" reason-rend " or' "tell-cause," as he ,names it in English, pp. 236-237 of Arber's reprint) hardly agree with the Persian figure, since he has in mind real, not imaginary, causes. The next figure, turd u 'aks, or "thrust and inversion," simply consists in the transposition in the secondTud o 'aka rntp-dCof the two halves of the first, thus :- 94. Chi shikdr-ast nazd-i-d, chi muff: cht mapaf-ast fish-i-0, cht shikdr. "Alike to him are chase and battle : battle and chase are alike to him." The two next couplets illustrate the mukarrar or re- peated " figure, which resembles those called Anadiplosis (" the Mukarrar. redouble "), Epanalepsis (" echo-sound," or "slow return "), and Epizeuxis (" underlay" or "cuckoo- spell ") by Puttenham (pp. 210--212), especially the latter, exemplified in the three following verses :- "It was Waryrte, Maryne that wrought mine woe." Again : "The chiefest staff of mine assured stay, With no small grief is gone, is gone away.' And again, in a verse of Sir Walter Raleigh's :- "With wisdom's eyes had but blind fortune seene, Then had my love, my love for ever beene." 95. Bcdra badra dihad bi-sd'il zar: Dijla Dijla kasliad bi-bazm 'uqdr. 96. Gashta z'an badra badra badra khajil: burda a'dn Dijla Dola Dijla yadr. "He gives gold to the beggar, purse-on-purse : he brings wine to the feast, Tigris-on-Tigris. From that purse-on-purse the purse is ashamed : from that Tigris-on-Tigris the Tigris derives wealth." 76 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTOR Y The four concluding verses of the poem illustrate the two ~usn-i-@lab. figures hum-i-ralab, or "apposite request," and ~usn-i-maq!at. hurn-i-maqta', or "apposite conclusion ":- 97. Khusrawd I bd zanzdiza dar jalig-am :ki bi-glzant mi-guddzad- ain hamwdr : 98. Clzi bzrwad gar kaf-i-tu bar girad az maydn-i-man u zamrfna gltirbdr? 99. Td 'aydn-ast milrr-ld fribish, Id nihdn-asl charkh-rd asrdr, roo. R~izu shab juz snklui ma-bddat shuglzl; dl u nzah juz tarab ma-bddat kdr ! "0 Prince 1 I am at war with Fortune : for ever she consumes me with vexation : How would it be if thy hand should remove the dust (i.e., clis- agreemcnt) between me and Fortune ? So long as the shining of the sun is apparent, so long as the secrets of the sphere are hidden, Day and night may thine occupation be naught but generosity : year and month may thy business be naught but enjoy- ment !" Nearly all the more important rhetorical figures are con- tained and illustrated in the above qaiida, or have been mentioned incidentally in connection with it, though many minor embellishments will be found by those desirous of going further into the matter in the works of Gladwin and Riickert. Of those omitted mention need only be made of the foliowing :- (I) The ta7rikh, or chronogram, where the sum of the letters, according to the abjad reckoning, in a verse, sentence, or group of words, gives the date of the event Ta'rikh. commemorated. The most ingenious paraphrase in English of a Persian chronogram with which I am acquainted is one by Hermann Bicknell ("HAjji 'Abdu71-Wahid "), the admirer and translator of HBfifi, on the well-known chrono- gram :- Chu dar khdk-i-Mtrsalld sn'klrt nranzil, &-j; &z'&h ash az KH.iK-I-NUSALLA. THE CHRONOGRAM 77 "Since he made his home in the earth of Musalli,~ Seek for his date from THE EARTH OF ICIU~ALLA.~ The letters composing the words Kh&-i-Muialfd are :- K/1=6oo; d=r; k=zo; m=40; i=go; ~=SO; y = 10 : Total = 791 (A.H. = 1389). The difficulty in pro- ducing a chronogram in English is that only seven letters (C, D, I, L, M, V, and X) have numerical values, neverthe- less Bicknell overcame this difficulty and thus paraphrased the above chronogram :- "Thrice take thou from IIIUSALLA*~EARTH " (M+L+L =1100) "ITS RICHEST GRAIN " (I + I +C + I =103 x 3 =309 : XI00 -309 =791).' (2) The talmlh, or allusion (to a proverb, story, or well- known verse of poetry) is another pretty figure. Talmib. Here is an English instance horn the lngoldsby Legends :- "Such a tower as a poet of no mean calibre I once knew and loved, poor, dear Reginald Heber, Assigns to oblivion-a den for a she-bear." The allusion is to the following verse in Heber's Palestine :- "And cold Oblivion midst the ruin laid, Folds her dank wing beneath the ivy shade." A good instance from the Biistrin of Sa'di is (ed. Graf, p. 28, 1. 2) :- I "The Oratory," a place close to Shiriz, which was a favourite resort of the poet. For European chronograms see pp. 23-25 of Morgan's Macaronic Poetry. One of the simplest and best is that giving the date of Queen Elizabeth's death : "My Day Is Closed In Immortality " (MDCIII = A.D. 1603). So for Martin Luther's death we have: "eCCe nVnC MorItVr IVstVs In pace ChrIstI eXItV et beatVs," i.e., M.CCCCC.X.WVVVY.111111 - A.D. 1546. 78 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTORY Chi hdjaf ki nuk kursiy-i-dsmdn Nihi zir-i-pd-yi Qizil Arsldn P "What need that thou should'st place the nine thrones (i.e., spheres) of heaven beneath the feet of Qizil Arsldn I" The allusion is to the following verse by Uahir of Fdryhb :- Nulr kuusi-i-jalak nihad andfslra zfr-I-pdy Td brisa bar rikdb-i-Qizil ArsIdtz nihad. Imagination puts the nine thrones (spheres) of heaven beneath its feet That it may imprint a kiss on the stirrup of Qizil Arslin." 'Ubayd-i-ZQkdnf, a very bitter satirist who died some twenty years before Hdfi&, wrote amongst other poems a little mathnawl (still a popular children's book in Persia) named "The Cat and the Mouse" (Mirsh u Gurba), in which an old cat plays the devotee in order to entice the mice within its clutches. The mice report its "conversion " to their king in the following verse :- "fi!uzhdagdnd I ki gurba zdhid shud, 'Abid, u mu'min, u musulmdnd I" "Good tidings ! for the cat has become an ascetic, A worshipper, a believer, a devout Muslim !" From this story the phrase "gurba zdhid shud" (" the cat has become an ascetic ") became very common in speaking of an old sinner who shams piety for purely mundane (generally evil) objects; and Hhfia alludes to this in the following verse :- Ay kabk-i-khr~shkltnvdrn l Kujd nrl-raw11 Bi-!st l Ghim ma-shaw ki "gurba-i-'dbid " nanrdz kard I "0gracefully-walking partridge I Whither goest thou? Stop ! Be not deceived because the 'devout cat ' has said its prayers I " DIFFICULT ALLUSIONS ' 79 These allusions often constitute one of the most serious difficulties which the European student of Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and other Muslim languages has to :;Eg!;l;f encounter, since the common ground of his- poetryMuslims.ofthe torical and literary knowledge shared by all persons of education in the lands of Islhm is quite different from that in which the European and other Christian nations participate. Any allusion to the Qur'iin, for instance, is supposed to be intelligible to a well-educated Muslim ;yet it may cost the Christian reader an infinity of trouble to identify it and trace it to its source. To take one instance only, which, sc non I wero k bcn trovato. The poet Firdawsi, when suffering from the sore disappointment occasioned by Sul!dn Mahmiid's niggardly recognition of his great work, the. Shcihnrfma, or Book of Kings, wrote a most bitter satire (now prefixed to most editions of that work), left it in the hands of a friend of his, with instructions to deliver it after the lapse of a certain period, and then made the best of his way to Tabaristdn, where he sought refuge with the Ispahbad Shfrzhd (or, according to others, Shahriydr, the son of Sharzin). SultAn Mahmlid, on reading the satire, was filled with fury, and wrote to this Prince demanding the surrender of the poet, and threatening, should his demand not be complied with, to come with his elephants of war (which appear to have been a great feature of his army) and trample him and his army, villages and people under their feet. It is said that the Ispahbad merely wrote on the back of the Sultdn's missive the three letters ''A. L. M." Though Sult6n Mahmiid, it is said, did not at once see the allusion, all his courtiers imme- diately recognised it, and knew that the Ispahbad's intention was to remind them of the fate which overtook Abraha the Abyssinian, who, trusting in his elephants, would have pro- faned the Holy City of Mecca in the very year of the Prophet Muhammad's birth, known ever afterwards as "the Year of the Elephant." For concerning these impious "People of the 80 RETROSPECTJ VE AND INTROD UCTOR Y Elephantn a short chapter (No. CV) of the Qur'dn was revealed, known as the Shratu'l-Fil, which begins with the letters "A. L. M.," i.e., Alum tara kayfa facala Rabbuka bi-dshhbi'l-Ffl?-"Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the People of the Elephant 7 Did HE not cause their device to miscarry ? And send against them birds in flocks, which pelted them with stones of baked clay ? Arid make them like leaves of corn eaten [by cattle] ? " The allusion was extraordinarily appropriate, and is said to have effectually turned the Sultin from his purpose. Nothing, indeed, is SO effective or so much admired amongst Muslirns as the skilful and apposite application of a passage from their Sacred Book, and to this topic I shall have occasion to revert again at the end of this chapter. Taih;lf is another ingenious figure depending on the dia- critical points which serve to distinguish so many letters of the Arabic alphabet. By changing these points, Ta$bif. without interfering with the bodies of the letters, the sense of a sentence may be completely changed, and the sentence or sense so changed is said to be mu;a!~l~af. The expression occurs in the Bzistrin of Sa'dl (ed. Graf, p. 166, 1. 4) :- 'Mard bdsa,' guftd, 'bi-tas!zif dih, Ki dafwish-rd trislia az bdsa bih! "'Give me,' said he, 'kisses with la.$tif, For to the poor man tilslta (provisions) are better than brisa ' (kisses)." This figure cannot be illustrated or properly explained without the use of Arabic letters, else I should be tempted to cite an ingenious poem, quoted by Rashid-i-Watwht in his Hadd'ip's-Si?lr, wherein the sense of each verse is changed from praise to blame by a slight alteration of the diacritical points, so that, for example, Hast dar ail-at bulandl bf-khildf (" The nobility in thy stock is indisputable ") becomes Hast SATJRE AND PARODY 81 dar ail-at palfdl bl-khildf ("The uncleanness in thy stock is indisputable "). Some few words should, perhaps, be said at this point con- cernlng the satire (hajw) and the parody (jaw&). Satire was amongst the Arabs, even in pre-Muhammadan S$ifdy9d days, a powerful weapon, and commonly took the form of what were known as mathdlib, it., poems on the disgraces and scandals attaching to some rival or hostile tribe. In Persian, one of the earliest satires preserved to us is that of Firdawsi on Sultin Mahmiid, to which allusion has already been made. This, though very bitter, is utterlydevoid of the coarse invective and innuendo wllich mar (according to Western ideas) most satirical poems of the Arabs and Persians. The five following verses may serve to give some idea of its style :- "Long years this ShAhndma I toiled to complete, That the IGng might award me some recompense meet, But uaught save a heart wrung with grief and despair Did I get from those promises empty as air I Had the sire of the King been some Prince of renown, My forehead had surely been graced by a crown I Were his mother a lady of high pedigree, In silver and gold had I stood to the kneel But, being by birth not a prince but a boor, The praise of the noble he could not endure I" Any one who wishes to form an idea of the grossness which mars so much of the satirical verse of the Persians should peruse the crescendo series of abusive poems which marked the progress of the quarrel between the poet Kh6qPni (d. A.D. I 199) and his master and teacher, Abu'l-'Uld, which will be found in full, with translations, in Khanikof's admirable Mbrnoire sur Khdcdni (Paris, 1865, pp. 14-23). The quatrain with which Abu'l-'Uld opened the duel is delicacy itself compared to what follows, and will alone bear translation. He says :- 7 82 RE TROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTOII Y Khdqdniyd / Agarchi suklzan nfk ddniyd, Yak nukla gziyam-at :bi-shinaw rdyagdniyd I Hajw-i-kad nra-kun ki zi tu mila buwad bi-sinn: Bdshad ki iS pidar buwad-at, lu na-ddniyd I which may be paraphrased in English :- "Thy verse, Khiqbni, deeply I admire, Yet one small hint to offer I desire : Mock not the man whose years outnumber thine: He may, perchance (thou know'st not), be thy sire !* The following, however, ascribed to Kamil IsmacIl of IsfahAn (killed by the Mongols when they sacked that city in A.D. 1237-38), is the most irreproachable specimen of Persian satire with which I have met :- Gar kttvija zzi bahr-i-rnd bad! gufl &Id clzilzra zi gltam nu-ntl khardshinz: Md glzayr-i-nikzi'iyash nu-gti'int, Th har du duraiglz gufta bdshim/ which may be paraphrased :- "My face shall show no traces of despite, Although my Patron speaketh ill of me : His praise I'll still continue to recite, That both of us alike may liars be I" AS for the jawhb (literally "answer "), it may be either a parody or merely an imitation, this latter being also called a nadlra, or "parallel." The great parodists of ParodlegandParauels. Persia were 'Ubayd-i-ZAkAnI, a ribald wit who died about A.D. 1370, and of whose satires in verse and prose a selection was published in Constantinople in A H. 1303 (A.D. 1885-86) ;and Ab6 Ishiq (Bushaq) of Shirgz, the Poet of Foods ; and Nifigma'd-Din Mahmiid Qiri of Yazd, the Poet of Clothes, from the works of both of whom selections were published in the same year and place. Each of these was a parodist, but the first-named was by far the greatest CONVENTIONAL METAPHORS as a master of satire, and excelled in prose as well as in verse, as we shall have occasion to remark when we come to speak of his period. Much more might be said on the Rhetoric of the Muslims, but considerations of space forbid me for the present to enlarge . further on this subject, and I must refer such of Conventlonallty inmetaphor my readers as desire fuller information to the and siniile. works of Gladwin, Riickert, Gibb, Blochmann, and the native writers on these topics. , A few words, however, must be added on a work of great utility to students of the erotic poetry of the Persians, I mean the "Lover's Companion" (Anlru'l-'Urhshhp) of Sharafu'd-Din Rhi, who flourished in the latter part of the fourteenth century of our era. This book treats of the similes which may be employed in describing the various features of the beloved, and has been translated and annotated in French by M. Clkment Huart, Professor of Persian at the dcole des Langues Orientales Vivantes (Paris, 1875). It contains nineteen chapters, treating respectively of the hair, the forehead, the eyebrows, the eyes, the eyelashes, the face, the down on the lips and cheeks, the mole or beauty- spot, the lips, the teeth, the mouth, the chin, the neck, the bosom, the arm, the fingers, the figure, the waist, and the legs. In each chapter the author first gives the various terms applied by the Arabs and Persians to the part which he is discussing, differentiating them when any difference in meaning exists ; then the metaphors used by writers in speaking of them, and the epithets applied to them, the whole copiously illustrated by examples from the poets. Thus the eyebrows (in Persian abrh, in Arabic hhjib) may be either joined together above the nose (muttasil), which is esteemed a great beauty, or separated (munfayil), and they are spoken of by the Persian poets by thirteen metaphors or metaphorical adjectives. Thus they may be compared to cresccnt moons ; bows ; rainbows ; arches ; rni(lrdbs ;I the letter nin, 0; the letter tdf, The mi!trdb is the niche in every mosque which shows the direction of the Ka'ba of Mecca, towards which the faithful must turn in prayer. 84 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTOR Y 3 ; the curved head of the mall-bat or polo-stick ; the ddgh, or mark of ownership branded on a horse or other domestic animal ; and the tugllrd, or royal seal on the letters- patent of beauty. In the case of the hair the number of metaphors and metaphorical adjectives of which the use is sanctioried is much greater: in Persian, according to our author, "these are, properly speaking, sixty ;but, since one can make use of a much larger number of terms, the hair is spoken of metaphorically as 'that which possesses a hundred attributes' ";of which attributes a copious list is appended. From what has been said, it will now be fully apparent how intensely con\~entionaland artificial much Persian poetry is. Not only the metres and ordering of the rhymes, Essentially conventional but the sequence of subjects, the permissible com- character ofMuslim parisons, similes, and metaphors, the varieties of rhetorical embellishment, and the like, are all fixed by a convention dating from the eleventh or twelfth cen- tury of our era ;and this applies most strongly to the qaiida. Hence it is that the European estimate of the greatness of a Persian poet is often very diifesent from that of his own countrymen, since only beauties of thought can be preserved in translation, while beauties of form almost necessarily dis- appear, however skilful the translator may be. Thus it happens that 'Umar Khayyhm, who is not ranked by the Persians as a poet of even the third class, is now, probably, better known in Europe than any of his fellow-countrymen as a writer of verse ;while of the qasida-writers so highly esteemed by the Persians, such as Anwari, KhLqinI, or mahir of Firyiib, the very names are unfamiliar in the West. The early Arab poets of the classical (z.c., the pre-Muham- madan, early Muhammadan, and Umayyad) periods are natural, unaffected, and perfectly true to their environ- Substance and style as canons ment, and the difficulty which we often ex- of criticism. perience in understanding their meaning depends on the unfamiliarity of that environment rather than up011 STYLE VERSUS SUBSTANCE ' 85 anything far-fetched or fanciful in their comparisons; but, apart from this, they are splendidly direct and spontaneous. Even in Umayyad times, criticism turned rather on the ideas expressed than on the form into which they were cast, as we plainly see from an anecdote related in the charming history of al-Fakhri (ed. Ahlwardt, pp. 149-I~o), according to which 'Abdu'l-Malik (reigned A.D. 685-705) one day asked his courtiers what they had to say about the following verse :- Ahimu bi-Dar& md hayaytu, fa-in anttrl, Fa-wci-harabrf mim-man yahimu bihrf ba'dfl " I shall continue madly in love with Da'd so long as I live; and, if I die, Alack and alas for him who shall be in love with her after me 1" They replied, "A fine sentiment." "Nay," said 'Abdu'l- Malik, "this is a fellow over-meddlesome after he is dead. This is not a good sentiment.'' The courtiers agreed. "How then," continued the Caliph, "should he have expressed him- self? " Thereupon one of those present suggested for the second line :-...Uwakkil bi-Dar&" man yalrfmu biltd ba'dif ! ..."I will assign to Da'd one who shall love her after me 1" "Nay," said 'Abdu'l-Malik, "this is [the saying of3 a dead man who is a procurer and a go-between." "Then how,"' the courtiers demanded, "should he have expressed himself " aWhy," said the Caliph, "he should have said :- ,..Fa-lrf galu[tal Da'dumli-dhi khullafn bard{/ ...;'and if I die, Da'd shall be no good to any lover after mel'" 86 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROD UCTOX Y Here, then, it is wholly a question of the idea expressed, not of the form in which it is cast. Now see what that greatest philosophical historian of the Arabs, the celebrated Ibn Khaldiin (born in Tunis, A.D. 1332; died in Cairo, A.D. 1406) says in chap. xlvii ,'::,K,hcF, of the sixth section of his masterly Prolcgomcna,~ or Models of Style. which is headed : "That the Art of composing in verse or prose is concerned only with words, not with ideas" :- "Know," he begins, "that thc Art of Discourse, whether in verse or prose, lies only in words, not in ideas ;for the latter are merely accessories, while the former are the principal concern [of tl~c writer]. So the artist who would practise the faculty of Discourse in verse and prose, exercises it in words only, by storing his memory with models from the speech of the Arabs, so that the use and fluency thereof may increase on his tongue until the faculty [of ex- pressing himself] in the language of Mudar becomes confirmed in him, and he becomes freed from the foreign idiom wherein he was educated amongst his people. So he should imagine himself as one born and brought up amongst the Arabs, learning their language by oral prompting as the child learns it, until he becomes, as it were, one of them in their language. This is bccause, as we have already said, language is a faculty [manifested] in speech and acquired by repetition with the tongue until it be fully acquired. Now the tongue and speech deal only with words, while ideas belong to the mind. And, again, ideas are cominon to all, and are at the disposal of every understanding, to employ as it will, needing [for such employment] no art; it is the construction of speech to express them which needs art, as we have said ;this consisting, as it were, of moulds to contain the ideas. So, just as the vessels wherein water is drawn from the sea may be of gold, or silver, or pottery, or glass, or earthenware, whilst the water is in its essence one, in such wise that the respective excellence [of each] varies according to the vessels filled with water, according to the diversity of their species, not according to any difference in the water ; just so the excellence and eloquence of language in its use dillers accordiug to the dilferent gr;tdes of speech in wllich it is cxpressccl, in rcspcct of its con-- Beyrout ed. of A.D. 1900, p. 577 ;vol. iii, p. 383, of de Slane's French translation. IBN KHALDUN ON STYLE 87 formity with the objects [in view], while the ideas are [in each case] invariable in themselves. He, then, who is incapable of framing a discourse and [shaping] its moulds [i.e., its style] accord- ing to the requirements of the facultyof speech, and who endeavours to express his thought, but fails to express it well, is like the para- lytic who, desiring to rise up, cannot do so, for loss of the power thereunto." With these "moulds" (asdlib, plural of urlirb), wherein, as it were, we cast our ideas, and so give them style and distinction, Ibn Khalddn deals at some length, recommending as models of expression the pre-Islamic pagan poets of the Arabs ;Abli Tammim, the compiler of the flamdsa, who died about the middle of the ninth century ;Kulthiim b. 'Umar al-'AttibI, who flourished in the reign of Hlriinu'r-Rashid ; Ibnu'l- Mu'tazz, whose one day's Caliphate was extinguished in his blood in A.D. 908 ;Abli Nuwls, the witty and disreputable Court-poet of ar-Rashid ;the Sharif ar-Radi (died A.D. 1015) ; cAbdu'llih b. al-Muqaffa', the apostate Magian, put to death in A.D. 760 ;Sahl b. HArhn (died A.D. 860), the wazir Ibnu'z- ZayyAt (put to death in A.D. 847) ; Badf'u'z-Zaman al- Hamadhinf, the author of the first Maqdmlit (died A.D. 1oo8), and the historian of the House of Buwayh, as-Sibi (died A.D. 1056). He who takes these as models, and commits their compositions to memory, will, says Ibn Khaldlin, attain a better style than such as imitate later writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of our era, like Ibn Sahl, Ibnu'n- Nabih, al-Baysini, and 'Imadu'd-Din al-KAtib of I~fahh. And so Ibn Khaldiin, logically enough from his point of view, defines poetry (Beyrout ed. of A.D. 1900, p. 573)as follows :- "Poetry is an effective discourse, based on metaphor and descrip- tions, divitlcd into parts Lie., verses] agreeing with one another in metre and rhyme, each one of such parts being independent in scope and aim of what precedes and follows it, and conforming to llrc nzoulds [or styles] of the Arabs appropriated lo it." 88 RETXOSPECTIVE AND INTRODUCTOR Y And about a page further back he compares the writer, whether in prose or verse, to the architect or the weaver, in that he, like them, must work by pattern ;for which reason. - he seems inclined to agree with those who would exclude al-Mutanabbl and Abu'l-'Ali al-Ma'arri from the Arabian Parnassus because they were original, and "did not observe the moulds [or models sanctioned by long usage] of the Arabs." Turning now to the Persians, we find, as we should naturally- expect in these apt pupils of the Arabs, that precisely similar ideas maintain in this field also. "The words of Conservatism of Persianpoetry the secretary (or clerk in a Government office) and prose styles. will not," says the author of the Chahdr Maqdla, "attain to this elevation un ti1 he becomes familiar with every science, obtains some hint from every master, hears some aphorism from every philosopher, and borrows same elegance from every man of letters." To this end the aspirant to literary skill is advised in particular to study, with a view to forming and improving his style, in Arabic the Qur'dn, the Traditions, the proverbial sayings of the Arabs, and the writings of the Sil!ib Isma'll b. 'Abbitd, as-Sdbf, Ibn Qudima, Badi'u'z-Zam5n al- Hamadhinf, al-Hariri, and other less well-known writers, with the poems of al-Mutanabbi, al-Abiwardf, and al-Ghazzi ;and, in Persian, the afibks-ndma (composed by Kay-Kd'bs, the Ziyhrid ruler of Tabaristitn, in A.D. 1082-83), the Shdhndma of Firdawsi, and the poems of Riidagi and 'Unzuri. This intense conventionality and conservatism in literary matters, broken down in Turkey by the New School led to victory by Ziyh Pasha, KemAl Bey, and Shi~~islEfendi, maintains an undiminished sway in Persia ;and if, on the one hand, it has checked originality and tended to produce a certain monotony of topic, style, and treatment, it has, on the other, guarded the Persian language from that vulgarisation which the triumph of an untrained, ulltrammelled, and unconventional genius of the barbaric-degenerate type tends to produce in our own and other European tongues. PERSIAN PROSE STYLE ' 89 The models or "moulds " in Persian, as in Arabic, have, it is true, varied from time to time and, to a certain extent, from place to place ;for, as we have seen, the canons ,n~~~~'~~,",",i-of criticism adopted by Dawlatshih at the end of ,~o~~,,n$~~,the fifteenth century differ widely from those laid of Pers~an literarystyle. down by the author of the Chahrir Maqdla in the middle of the twelfth ;while Ibn Khaldh's severe and classical taste prevented him from approving the rhetorical extravagances which had prevailed amongst his Eastern co- religionists and kinsfolk for nearly three centuries. Yet simplicity and directness is to be found in modern as well as in ancient writers of Persian verse and prose ; the hdn assurance") of the Bibis, written by Bahd'u'lldh about A.D. 1859, is as concise and strong in style as the Chahrir Maqdla, composed some seven centuries earlier, and the verse of the contemporary Passion-Play (ta'ziya) or of the popular ballad (taynifl is as simple and natural as one of Rbdagi's songs ; while the flabby, inflated, bombastic style familiar to all students of the Anwdr-i-SuhayN has always tended to prevail where the patrons of Persian literature have been of Turkish or Mongolian race, and reaches its highest development in the hands of Ottoman writers like Veysi and Nergisi. CHAPTER I1 TOWARDSthe end of the tenth century of our era Persia, though still nominally subject to the Caliph of Baghdid (at this time al-Qidir bi'lljh, whose long reignState of Persia at the close of the lasted from A.D. 991 to IO~I),was in fact divided tenth century. between the SA~nAnids,whose capital was at Bu- khdrd, and the Daylamite House of Buwayh, who dominated the southerti and south-western provinces and were practically absolute in Baghdad itself, the Caliph being a mere puppet in their hands.1 Besides these, two small dynasties, the Houses of Ziydr and Hasanawayh, ruled respectively in Tabaristin (the modern Gilin and nlizandarin, lying between the southern shore of the Caspian and the Elburz Mountains) and Kurdistin. All of these dynasties appear to have been of frinian (Persian or Kurdish) race, and none of their rulers claimed the title of Sut;rin, but contented themselves generally with those of Arnir, Ispahbad, or Malik :in other words, they regarded themselves as princes and governors, but not as kings. Al-Birlini, the great chronologist, who flourished about A.D. 1000, and is therefore a contemporary witness for the period of which we are now speaking, discusses at some length the pedigrees of the three more important of the four dynasties See Stanley Lane-Poole's Molrarnmadnn Dj~rzasfics,p. 140. 90 RIVALS OF THE GHAZNA w~S 91 mentioned above.' On the pedigree of the Buwayhids, who traced their descent from the Shsinian king Bahrim Giir, he Persianorig,nd casts, it is true, some doubt, and adds that certain ,t~~~,u3"m~n,persons ascribed to them an Arabian origin ; md Ziyir. but, whether or no they were scions of the ancient Royal House of Persia, there can be no reasonable doubt as to their Persian nationality. Concerning the House of Shmin he declares that "nobody contests the fact" that they were descended from Bahri5m Chiibin, the great marzubdn, or Warden of the Marches, who raised so formidable an insurrection during the reign of the Sdsinian king Khusraw Parwiz (A.D. 590-627);whilst of the Ziyhrids he similarly traces the pedigree up to the Sbinian king Qubhdh (A.D. 488- 531). We must, however, bear in mind that personal and political bias may have somewhat influenced al-Biriini's doubts and assurances in this matter, since he could hardly refrain from professing certainty as to the noble pedigree claimed by his generous and enlightened patron and benefactor Qhbiis, the son of,Washmgir the Ziydrid, entitled Shamru'l-Matdlf, the Sun of the Heights," whom also he may have thought to please by his aspersions on the House of Buwayh. Confirma- tion of this view is afforded by another passage in the same work (p. 131 of Sachau's translation), where al-Biriini blames the Buwayhids for the high-sounding titles bestowed by them on their ministers, which he stigmatises as "nothing but one great lie," yet a few lines lower lauds his patron Shamsu'l- Ma'dli ("the Sun of the Heights") for choosing for himselr "a title the full meaning of which did not exceed his merits." Khurhin, the realm of the Sdmdnids (which at that time greatly exceeded its modern limits and included much of what is now known as Transcaspia or Central Asia), was, as has been fully explained in the Prolegomena to this work, the cradle of "modern," LC., post-Muhammadan, Persian litera- l See Sacl~au'stranslation of the Chronology of Ancient hlafions, PP 44-48. CHAPTER I1 TOWARDSthe end of the tenth century of our era Persia, though still nominally subject to the Caliph of Baghdbd (at this time al-Qridir bi'llrih, whose long reign State of Persia at thecloseof the lasted from A.D. 991 to IO~I),was in fact divided tenth century. between the SAmAnids, whose capital was at Bu- khdrd, and the Daylamite House of Buwayh, who dominated the southern and south-western provinces and were practically absolute in BaghdAd itself, the Caliph being a mere puppet in their hands.' Besides these, two sinall dynasties, the Houses of Ziyirr and Hasanawayh, ruled respectively in TabaristAn (the modern Gil5n and Mhandarln, lying between the southern shore of the Caspian and the Elburz Mountains) and Kurdistln. All of these dynasties appear to have been of irrinian (Persian or Kurdish) race, and none of their rulers claimed the title of Suorin, but contented themselves generally with those of Amlr, I~pakbad,or Malik :in other words, they regarded thernsclves as princes and governors, but not as kings. Al-Birlini, the great chronologist, who flourished about A.D. 1000, and is therefore a contemporary witness for the period of which we are now speaking, discusses at some length the pedigrees of the three more important of the four dynasties 1 See Stanley Lane-Poole's Moharntnadnn Dj~iiastics,p. 140. 90 RIVALS OF THE GHAZNA W. 91 mentioned above.' On the pedigree of the Buwayhids, who traced their descent from the Sdsdnian king Bahrlm Giir, he Persian orig,of casts, it is true, some doubt, and adds that certain the Houses ofB,,wayh,Sbmin, persons ascribed to them an Arabian origin ; a"dZiyk. but, whether or no they were scions of the ancient Royal House of Persia, there can be no reasonable doubt as to their Persian nationality. Concerning the House of SImin he declares that "nobody contests the fact" that they were descended from Bahrim Chiibin, the great marzubin, or Warden of the Marches, who raised so formidable an insurrection during the reign of the Skinian king Khusraw . Parwiz (A.D. 590--627);whilst of the Ziydrids he similarly traces the pedigree up to the SbAnian king Qubbdh (A.D. 488- 531). We must, however, bear in mind that personal and political bias may have somewhat influenced al-Bixiini's doubts and assurances in this matter, since he could hardly refrain from professing certainty as to the noble pedigree claimed by his generous and enlightened patron and benefactor Qgblis, the son of, Wash~ngirthe Ziyirrid, entitled Shamsdl-Ma'rfll, "the Sun of the Heights," whom also he may have thought to please by his aspersions on the House of Buwayh. Confirma- tion of this view is afforded by another passage in the same work (p. 131 of Sachau's translation), where al-Biriini blames the Buwayhids for the high-sounding titles bestowed by them 011 their ministers, which he stig~natisesas "nothing but one great lie," yet a few lines lower lauds his patron Shamsu'l- Ma'ili ("the Sun of the Heights") for choosing for himselt "a title the full meaning of which did not exceed his merits." Khurhsbn, the realm of the SImbnids (which at that time greatly exceeded its modern limits and included much of what is now known as Transcaspia or Central Asia), was, as has been fully explained in the ProIegomena to this work, the cradle of "modern," i.e., post-Muhammadan, Persian litera- l See Sachau's translation of the Chronology of Ancient A'ations, PP*44-48. 92' THE GHAZNA ~f PERIOD ture. But in spite of the enthusiasm with which ath-Thac- alibi I speaks of the galaxy of literary talent assembled at Bu- khiri, it is not to be supposed that in culture and Relative degrees of culturein science Khurdsin had outstripped Firs, the cradle Khurisin, Tabs- risth, and of Persian greatness, and the south of Persia gene- Southern Persia. rally. Ath-Thac;ilibi himself (lac. cit., p. 3) cites an Arabic verse by the poet AbG Ahmad b. Abi Bakr, who flourished about the end of the ninth century of our era at the SAmAliid Court, wliich points very clearly to the intellectual inferiority of Khurisin to 'Iriq ;and a doggerel rhyme current in Persia at tlie present day stigmatises the Khur5sLnis as "clowns " (aldang.).~ Yet in K11urAs;in undoubtedly it was that the literary revival of the Persian language first began after the Muharnn~adanconquest ;and that because it was the most remote province of the Caliph's domains and the furthest removed from Baghdad, the centre and metropolis of that Islirnic culture of which the Arabic language was, from Spain to Samarqand, the recognised medium, until the destruction of the Caliphate by the barbarous Mongols in the middle of the thirteenth century. In Tabaristin also, another relnote pro- vince, which, first under its Zoroastrian IspaJllads (who long survived the fall of their Sisjnian masters), then under Shi'ite rulers of the House of 'Ali, and lastly under the House of Ziy%r, long maintained itself independent of the Caliphs of Baghdad and the Sgmrinid rulers of Khurisin, a pretty high degree of literary culture is implied by many remarks in the earliest extant history of that province composed by Ibn Isfandiybr (who flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century) ;for he mentions numerous Arabic works and cites many Arabic verses produced there in the ninth and tenth I Yntilnatu'd-Dnlrr, Damascus edition, vol. iv, pp. 33-4. The passage is translaled in the Prolc$orircna of this work, pp. 3654. See also B. de MeynardrsTableatc Litfdraire du Klrorassan et de la Transoxintrc au IV* sMcle dc 1'Hkgirc in the Jortr~mlAsiatiquc for March-April, 1854, pp. 293 et seqq. * See my Year afnotrgst the Persians, p. 232. CENTRES OF PERSIAN CULTURE 93 centuries of our era, particularly under the Zaydi Imams (A.D. 864-gz8),1 as well as some Persian works and one or two in the peculiar dialect of Tabaristin.2 As regards the House of Buwayh, Shicites and Persians as they were, it appears at first sight remarkable that so little of the literature of the Persian Renaissance should have been produced under their auspices, seeing that they were great patrons of learning and that the phrase "more eloquent than the two &ids" (it., the Sihib Ismacll b. 'Abbid and as-Sib!, the great minister and the great historian of the House of Buwajrh) had become proverbial 3 ; but the fact that the literature produced under their auspices was almost entirely Arabic is explained, as already remarked, by the closer relations which they maintained with Baghdid, tlie seat of the Caliphate and metropolis of Isl5m. Yet we cannot doubt that Persian poetry as well as Arabic was cultivated at the Buwayhid Courts, and indeed Muhammad 'Awfi, the oldest biographer of Persian poets whose work (entitled Luba'bu'l-Alblfb) has been preserved to us, mentions at least two ,poets who wrote in Persian and who enjoyed the patronage of the SA!lib Isma'il b. 'Abbid, viz., Mansfir b. 'Ali of Ray, poetically surnamed Mantipi, and AbG Bakr Muham- See especially Section i, ch. iv (ff. 4Zbef seqq. of the India Office MS., pp. 42, et seqq. of my translation), which treats of the L'Kingslnobles, saintly and famous men, scribes, physicians, astronomers, philosophers, and poets of Tabaristin." Abh '.4mr (circ. A.D.870), who is called "the poet of Tabaristin" par excellence, Abu'l-'A16 as-Sarwi, and the Sayyid al-UtrGsh were all notable poets ; while to the Sayyid Abu'l-Husayn a nurnber of Arabic prose works are ascribed, five of the most famous of which are named. A good many verses in the dialect of Tabaristjn are cited by Ibn Isfandiyir, including some composed by the lspahbad Khurshid b. Abu'l- Qisim of Mimtir and Birbad of Jarid ; but the oldest work composed in this dialect of which we have any knowledge appears to have been the Nihi-ttdltza, which formed the basis of the Persian Alnrzubdn-ndfrra (see Schefer's Chr6stomntltic Persane, vol. ii, p. 195). Tabari verses by 'Ali PirGza, called Diwirwaz, a contemporary of the Buwayhid 'Adudu'd- Dawla (middle of the tenth century),are also cited by Ibn Isfand~yir. 3 Ibn Isfandiyir, p. 90 of my translation. 94 THE GHAZNA WZ PERIOD mad b. 'Ali of Sarakhs, surnamed Khusrawl.~ The former, as 'Awfi tells us, was greatly honoured by the Sihib, in whose praise he indited Persian qasldas, of which specimens are given ; and when Badl'u'z-Zamin al-Hamadhhni (the author of a celebrated collection of Maqa'mdt, which, in the command of all the wealth and subtlety of the Arabic language, is deemed second only to the homonymous work of his more famous successor, at-Hariri) came as a lad of twelve to the $d!~ib's reception, his skill in Arabic was tested by bidding him extem- porise an Arabic verse-translation of three Persian couplets by this poet.2 Khusrawf, the second of the two poets above- mentioned, composed verses both in Arabic and Persian in praise of Shamsu'l-Ma'ili Qhb~is b. Washmgir, the Ziydrid ruler of Tabaristin, and the SLhib ; while Qumd of Gurgdn, another early poet, sung the praises of the same prince. Far surpassing in fame and talent the poets above mentioned was that brilliant galaxy of singers which adorned the Court Sultdn hIa!,mlid of the great conqueror, Sultin Mahmhd of Ghazna, o[G"azna. who succeeded to the throne of his father Subuk- tigln in A.D. 998. The dynasty which under his energetic and martial rule rose so rapidly to the most commanding position, and after his death so quickly declined before the growing power of the Seljdqs, was actually founded in A.D. 962 by Alptigin, a Turkish slave of the House of Simin, zt Ghaztla, in the heart of the Afghan highlands ;but its political significance only began some fourteen years later on the accessioll of Mahmbd's father Subukrigfn, the slave of All'tigin. 'I'liis great MabmGd, therefore, the champion of Islhm, the conqueror of India, the ruthless foe of idolatry, "the Right Hand of the Commander of the Faithful" (Yamfnu Anllri'l-Mh'mina'n, or Yaminu'd-Dawla), was the son of "the slave of a slave" ;a fact of which Firdawsi made full Seevol. ii of the Lzrbn'b, lately published in my Persian Historical Text Series by hlessrs. I31.ill of Leyden, pp. 1619. The verses are given in the Pvolegomerzn pp. 463-464. SULTANMA~M~?DOF GHAZNA 95 use in that bitter satirex wherein the disappointment of his legitimate hopes of an adequate reward for his thirty years' labour on his immortal epic, the Sha'hndma, found full expres- sion, turning, as it were, in a breath into infamy that reputa- tion as a patron of letters which the King so eagerly desired ; so that, as Jhi, writing five centuries later, says :- L "Guzasht shawkdt-i-Ma!zmtid,u darjasdna nu-mdnd yuz kt qadar, ki nu-ddnist qadr-i-Firdawsi." I. "Gone is the greatness of Mahmlid, departed his glory, And shrunk to 'He knew nof llze worfhof Firdawsi' his story." Following the plan which we have adopted in the first part of this History, we shall speak but briefly of SulfLn MahmGd himself, and concentrate our attention on the literary and scientific activity of which, by virtue rather of compulsion than attraction, his Court became for a while the focus. Of military genius and of statecraft his achievements afford ample evidence, so that he pushed back the Buwayhids, absorbed the realms of the Ziyirids, overthrew the Sdtnd~~ids,invaded India in twelve successive campaigns in twice that number of years (A.D. 1001-24), and enlarged the conlparatively narrow borders of the kingdom which he had inherited until it ex- tended from BukhdrL and Samarqand to Guzerat and Qinnawj, and included Afghinistin, Transoxiana, Khurisdn, Tabaristin, Sistin, Kashmir, and a large part of North-Western India. He finally died in A.D. 1030, and within seven years of his death the kingdom which he had built up had practically passed from his House into the hands of the Seljhqid Turks, though the House of Ghazna was not finally extinguished until A.D. 1186, when the kings of Ghiir wrested from them their last Indian possessions and gave them their coup de grdcc. Sultdn Mabmlid has often been described as a great patron of letters, but he was in fact rather a great kidnapper of See p. 81supra. i 96 THE GHAZNA ~f PERIOD literary men, whom (as we have already seen in the case of Firdawsi) he often treated in the end scurvily enough. Of the scientific writers of that time none were greater than Avicenna (AbG 'Ali ibn Sini), the physician-philosopher who, himself the disciple of Aristntle and Galen, was during the Middle Ages the teacher of Europe, and al-Biriini, the historian and chronologist. These two men, of whom the former was born about A.D. 980 and the latter about seven years earlier, together with many other scholars and men of letters, such as Abii Sahl Masihi the philosopher, Abu'l-Hasan Khamrnir the physician, and Ah6 Na~r'ArrBq the mathe- matician, had found, as we learn from the CliahAr Maqrila (Anecdote xxxv, pp. I 18-124of my translation), a happy and congenial home at the Court of Ma'm6n b. Ma'mGn, Prince of Khwirazm, whose territories were annexed by Sultdn MahmGd in A.D. 1017.' Shortly before this date Sult.dn Mahmiid sent to Ma'miin by the hand of one of his nobles, Husayn b. 'Alf b. Miki'il, a letter to the following effect :- "I have heard that there are in attendance on Khwirazmshih several men of learning, each unrivalled in his science, such as So-and-so and So-and-so. You must send them to my Court, so that they may have the honour of being presented thereat. We rely on being enabled to profit by their knowledge and skill, and request this favour on the part of the Prince of I